This    place    had    laid    hold    on    him    and    bound    him    as 
with   a    spell" 

(Page  136) 


<§    7 


CLA%B--LAVCHLIN 


Decorated  and  Illustrated 
By    Samuel    M.    Palmer 


New  York:    158   Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  125  No.  Wabash  Ave. 


2136844 


^  S~T  .    -  -r- - 


A  Ship  Sails  Away 9 

Left  Behind 18 

The  Stuff  that  Dreams  are  Made  of 26 

Strange  Cargoes 34 

"  Buck  " 47 

Companionship 59 

Ten  Years  Later 74 

12,500  Miles  Away 85 

The  Gloriana  is  Sighted 97 

Expectancy 104 

What  Cargoes  Came 115 

By  Naples'  Bay 127 


"I'm  afraid  it's  going  to  be  dull  for 
Ella  Marie,"  said  Ella  Marie's  father, 
self-accusingly. 

"I  spent  my  summers  there,  when  I 
was  about  her  age,  and  it  wasn't  dull 
for  me,"  answered  Ella  Marie's  mother. 

"  Your  grandmother  and  Aunt  Una  were 
more  than  twenty  years  younger,  then." 

"Yes;  but  I  don't  think  they  were 
very  different.  They  had  done  all  their 
changing  even  before  that.  Perhaps  they 
seemed  as  old  to  me  then  as  they  do 


10  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

now,  because  I  was  so  young  then. 
But  their  'oldness'  never  dulled  life 
for  me.  I  can  hardly  think  of  any  price 
that  could  buy  from  me — if  such  things 
were  salable! — my  memories  of  the  time 
I  spent  there.  I've  always  wanted  Ella 
Marie  to  have  at  least  one  summer  in 
the  old  home.  And  now  that  Aunt 
Una  has  invited  her,  I  can  think  without 
compunctions  of  Europe  for  myself." 

"  I  still  feel  as  if  we  ought  perhaps 
to  strain  a  point,  and  take  her." 

"I  don't,  dear!  If  we  were  going  to 
one  place,  to  stay  and  soak  it  in,  it  might 
be  different.  But  to  hop-scotch  around 
as  we  must  do,  would  be  bad  for  her 
and  harder  for  us  if  we  had  her  to  worry 
about.  She'd  get  tired  out,  and  have 
a  jumble  of  impressions.  She  has  too- 
constant  stimulation  now.  What  she 
needs  is  a  chance  to  dream.  What  we 
dream,  when  we  are  young,  matters 


A  SHIP  SAILS  AWAY  11 

lots  more  than  what  we  see — and  matters 
longer,  too.  I  want  Ella  Marie  to  dream 
and  dream  about  the  Old  World  before 
she  sees  it — to  dream  about  it  the  way 
you  and  I  have!  If  I  could  have  my 
wish  for  her,  it  would  be  that  few  of  the 
precious  things  of  life  may  come  to  her 
until  she  has  been  very  wistful  for  them. 
At  the  best,  there  are  too  many — like 
youth,  and  health — about  which  we  can 
never  grow  eager  until  we  have  lost  them." 

"  Right,  little  mother!  And  wise,  as 
usual.  I  know  what  it  costs  you  to 
leave  your  baby  behind — only  a  far- 
sighted  love  could  make  you  do  it."^ 

So  it  was  settled  that  when  Rob  and 
Nannie  Risler  went  on  that  "  two- 
months'  pilgrimage  to  the  whole  of 
Europe,"  as  Rob  called  it,  Ella  Marie 
should  not  be  dragged,  breathless, 
from  Naples  to  Edinburgh,  but  should 
go  to  the  old  home  of  her  mother's 


12  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

people  at  Gloucester,  Massachusetts. 
Rob  had  not  felt,  until  now,  that  he 
could  spend  two  months  away  from  busi- 
ness; he  did  not  know  when  he  might 
be  able  to  go  again.  Hence  the  com- 
prehensiveness of  the  tour  planned,  and 
the  necessity  for  unremitting  travel  and 
sight-seeing. 

They  were  to  sail  from  Boston;  and 
Nannie  went  on,  from  Chicago,  several 
days  ahead  of  sailing-time,  so  as  to  be 
with  Ella  Marie  in  Gloucester  while  the 
child  made  acquaintance  with  her  new 
surroundings.  Nannie  had  told  her  little 
girl,  almost  from  cradle  days,  delight- 
ful stories  of  her  own  childhood  in  the 
old  house  and  down  at  the  shore,  watch- 
ing the  ships  come  in.  Ella  Marie  was 
very  much  more  eager  to  enter  that 
story-book  atmosphere  wherein  her 
mother  had  been  a  little  girl,  than  she 
was  to  wander  in  the  greater  story 


A  SHIP  SAILS  AWAY  13 

book  lands  across  the  sea.  But  her 
ten-year-old  heart  was  heavy  with  the 
thought  of  parting,  and  with  anxious- 
ness  about  what  might  befall  her  parents 
when  they  got  so  far  away  from  her. 

"  I  know  just  how  she  feels,"  Nannie 
told  her  Aunt  Una.  "  I  can  remember 
it  all,  as  though  it  were  yesterday.  I 
don't  need  anyone  to  remind  me  what 
capacity  for  suffering  we  have  when 
we  are  ten.  I  knew,  of  course,  that  it 
wasn't  my  presence,  my  nearness,  which 
kept  my  parents  from  harm.  And  yet, 
somehow,  their  liability  to  illness  or 
accident  seemed  to  increase  a  thousand- 
fold when  we  were  separated  —  even 
though  it  was  I  who  went  away  and  left 
them  safe  at  home.  I  endured  tortures 
of  apprehension  on  their  account. 
Sometimes  it  has  almost  seemed  to  me 
as  if  I  suffered  more,  all  through  my 
youth,  dreading  their  death,  than  I 


14  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

did  in  the  actual  wrench  of  parting  from 
them.  Now,  what  do  you  think  I  ought 
to  do  about  our  sailing — let  Ella  Marie 
stand  on  the  dock  and  see  us  sail  away, 
or  say  good-bye  to  her  here  and  not 
give  her  any  mental  pictures  of  the 
gangplank  coming  in,  the  stay-behinds 
weeping,  the  water  widening  between 
us  and  the  shore?  For  my  part,  I 
don't  know  how  I'm  going  to  stay  on 
the  ship  and  see  Ella  Marie  on  the  dock, 
left  behind.  But  that's  not  the  point. 
I  want  to  do  what's  best  for  her." 

Aunt  Una  nodded  comprehendingly. 

"Dear,  dear!"  she  said.  "How  the 
old  problems  come  back  with  the  new 
lives!  It  used  to  be  a  great  anxiety  to 
Mother  to  know  what  was  best  for 
your  mother  and  me:  whether  to  let 
us  see  father  sail  away,  or  to  try  to  keep 
us  from  thinking  about  it  until  after  he 
was  gone.  She,  poor  dear,  always  suf- 


A  SHIP  SAILS  AWAY  15 

fered  agonies  when  the  Gloriana  spread 
her  wings  for  one  of  those  long,  slow 
flights  of  hers  to  lands  half-'round  the 
world.  But  there's  this  about  children 
— and  in  some  degree  about  most  of  us 
— retrospection  isn't  as  strong  as  antic- 
ipation. Something  in  us  keeps  us 
looking  forward  more  than  back;  even 
mother,  at  eighty-three  and  full  of  rem- 
iniscence, looks  ahead,  and  Beyond, 
eagerly.  So  we,  when  we  were  children, 
while  we  used  to  weep  heart-brokenly 
when  Father  went  away,  soon  began 
to  think  about  his  homecoming  and  to 
dream  of  what  he  might  bring.  I  be- 
lieve I'd  let  Ella  Marie  see  you  sail. 
She  will  cry;  she  will  suffer — for  a 
while.  But  it  will  make  her  expec- 
tancy so  much  keener.  Life  doesn't 
grow  richer  for  any  of  us  without  our 
hours  of  anguish — does  it?  " 

Ella  Marie  tried  to  be  very  good  about 


16  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

the  parting.  She  knew  how  hard  it 
was  for  her  parents,  and  she  had,  though 
she  was  only  ten,  a  desire  quite  as 
earnest  as  she  could  have  had  if  she 
were  forty,  to  speed  them  on  their  way  as 
cheerfully  as  possible.  She  had  schooled 
herself,  in  her  own  dear  little  fashion, 
to  be  brave — until  after  they  were  gone. 
Then,  of  course,  she  would  be  quite 
heart-broken;  but  they  should  never 
know  it — never!  The  prospect  of  her 
bravery  upheld  her  not  a  little.  But 
when  the  day  came,  the  vision  of  her 
heroic  young  self  grew  dim;  the  sight 
of  her  parents  waving  to  her  from  that 
upper  deck,  of  the  foaming  water  widen- 
ing between  them,  reduced  her  to  the 
merest  little  -  girlishness.  She  sobbed 
convulsively  as  she  clung  to  Aunt  Una. 

"I  can't  bear  it!"  she  thought.  And 
in  the  train  going  back  to  Gloucester  she 
pondered  the  extreme  probability  of  her 


A  SHIP  SAILS  AWAY  17 

death  from  grief,  and  pictured  the  wild 
woe  of  her  parents,  landing  at  Naples 
a  fortnight  hence  and  learning  that 
their  child  "  slept  with  her  fathers  "  in 
the  old  burying-ground  at  Gloucester. 
The  poignance  of  this,  and  the  drama 
of  it,  withdrew  her  thoughts  from  the 
ship  sailing  out  of  Boston  Bay,  and 
focused  them  upon  the  young  life  so 
soon  to  enter  upon  its  closing  scenes. 

Aunt  Una,  who  was,  in  fancy,  feeling 
the  rocking  billows  and  tasting  the  tang 
of  the  salt  breeze,  as  she  had  all  her  life 
longed  to  do  in  fact,  was  recalled  to 
consideration  of  the  absorbed  young  per- 
son beside  her,  by  a  plaintive  query. 

"  If  I — if  one  of  us  Rislers  died,  Aunt 
Una,  would  I — would  she  be  buried  in 
the  Parton  plot  with — with  her  fathers?  " 

And  Aunt  Una,  remembering  as  though 
it  were  yesterday,  answered  most  gravely: 
"  Yes— she  would." 


After  having  cried  herself  to  sleep,  in 
the  dark,  Ella  Marie  awoke  in  the  bright 
sunshine  of  a  June  morning  so  refreshed 
that  it  was  several  minutes  before  she 
remembered  her  misery  and  her  im- 
pending demise. 

Then  she  lay  very  still  for  quite  a 
long  while  and  pictured  the  not-distant 
morn  when  Aunt  Una  should  come  tip- 
toeing to  the  door  to  wake  the  little 
girl  who  would  never  wake  again.  Ella 

Marie  could  see  it  all  so  vividly.     The 
18 


LEFT  BEHIND  19 

sun  would  be  streaming  in  the  east 
windows,  just  as  it  was  now;  and  on  the 
back  of  the  little,  rush-bottomed  chair 
near  the  bed  would  be  hanging  a  little 
girl's  dress,  while  on  the  chair  would 
be  her  underwaist  and  panties  and  petti- 
coat, and  beside  it  her  shoes  and  stock- 
ings. A  friend  of  Mrs.  Risler's  had 
lost  a  two-year-old  baby,  and  Ella  Marie 
had  heard  it  said  that  the  baby's  mother 
cried  over  his  little  scuffed  shoes  more 
than  over  anything  else  that  belonged 
to  him.  Ella  Marie  raised  her  head 
from  the  pillow  slightly,  to  see  just  how 
pathetic  her  shoes  would  look  when  the 
little  feet  that  once  had  carried  them 
hither  and  yon,  were  become  forever 
still.  Then  she  went  on  picturing  how 
Aunt  Una  would  look  at  the  motionless 
small  figure  in  the  large  four-poster 
bed,  and  think  Ella  Marie  was  sleeping; 
then  how  she  would  speak,  and  get  no 


20  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

answer;  how  she  would  lean  over  and 
touch  the  marble  brow  of  the  quiet 
sleeper,  and  then  break  into  bitter  sobs, 
crying  "  She  has  died  of  a  broken  heart, 
our  lovely  Ella  Marie!  " 

Just  then,  unaware  of  the  sorrow  that 
was  so  imminent,  Aunt  Una  opened 
the  door. 

"  I  wonder,"  she  said,  quite  gaily, 
"  if  any  little  girl  in  here  knows  that  it 
is  'most  eight  o'clock?  " 

She  was  smiling  and  playful.  Ella 
Marie  almost  wept  as  she  thought  how 
soon  this  pleasant  lady  was  to  be  plunged 
into  the  depths  of  woe. 

11  I've  been  awake  a  long  time,"  she 
answered — indeed,  she  felt  as  if  she  had 
scarce  slept  at  all — "but  I  didn't  know 
just  what  time  it  was." 

Already  she  was  beginning  to  feel 
somewhat  withdrawn  from  earthly  things, 
and  yet — the  thought  of  breakfast  was 


LEFT  BEHIND  21 

not  wholly  repugnant.  Also,  even  with 
so  large  a  part  of  her  mind  occupied 
with  thoughts  of  death,  she  could  not 
help  noticing  that  in  her  hand  Aunt 
Una  had  a  quaint  little  box. 

"  It  just  occurred  to  me,"  Aunt  Una 
began,  holding  the  box  toward  Ella 
Marie,  "  that  you  might  care  to  wear 
these,  sometimes,  while  you  are  here. 
My  father  brought  them  to  me  from 
Naples.  Nearly  everyone  who  visits 
Naples  buys  corals,  it  seems.  I  dare 
say  you'll  be  getting  a  string  of  your 
own  from  there,  now." 

How  little  she  realized! 

Yet  it  was  with  a  fair  show  of  interest 
that  Ella  Marie  opened  the  box  which 
had  a  sliding  top  of  elaborately  inlaid 
wood,  and  took  from  its  bed  of  cot- 
ton a  string  of  coral  beads  of  a  rosy 
pink. 

"  I  thought  they'd  be  so  pretty  on  you 


22  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

because  you're  fair,"  Aunt  Una  said. 
"  Shall  we  try  them  on?  "  . 

Obligingly  Ella  Marie  bent  her  head 
while  Aunt  Una  clasped  the  necklace 
about  her  throat.  Then,  also  with  a 
very  pretty  air  of  pleasing,  she  obeyed 
Aunt  Una's  suggestion  to  "  hop  out  of 
bed  and  over  to  the  looking  glass,  and 
see  how  we  like  them." 

"Come  to  think  of  it,"  Aunt  Una 
said,  musingly,  as  they  gazed  into  the 
old  mirror,  "  it  was  in  this  very  glass 
that  I  first  saw  how  they  looked  on 
me.  I  must  have  been  about  ten- 
let's  see:  it  was  the  year  Father  brought 
home  the  little  monkey  from  Tangier, 
and  Mother's  beautiful  lace  shawl  from 
Gibraltar,  and  the  silk  sashes  from  Sor- 
rento for  your  Grandma  and  me — yes, 
I  must  have  been  just  about  ten.  And 
I  remember  that  I  came  in  here  to  look 
at  myself  with  my  necklace  on.  Dear, 


LEFT  BEHIND  23 

dear!  I  can  see  her  now,  that  other 
little  girl  of  ten,  standing  beside  you. 
She  didn't  have  such  pretty  curls  as 
yours — hers  were  darker,  and  curled 
tighter,  and  she  always  used  to  wish 
they  were  blond.  Her  eyes  weren't 
a  lovely  gray,  either — they  were  kind 
of  light  hazel  and  nobody  ever  called 
them  pretty.  But  inside  she  was  rather 
a  nice  little  girl,  I  think.  I  know  she 
used  to  have  ever  so  many  good  times 
with  the  things  she  '  made  up  in  her 
head.'" 

"  I  wish  she  was  here,  now,"  Ella 
Marie  sighed,  lonesomely. 

Aunt  Una's  face  wore,  for  a  brief 
moment,  an  expression  Ella  Marie  could 
not  understand.  Then  she  said, 

"Maybe  she  isn't  so  very  far  away! 
Maybe,  if  you  wear  her  coral  beads, 
and  think  about  her,  and  if  I  tell  you 
about  her,  you'll  feel  as  if  she  were  with 


24  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

you,  sometimes,  even  though  you  can't 
see  her." 

"  Maybe,"  admitted  Ella  Marie,  doubt- 
fully. "  What  became  of  the  little  mon- 
key? " 

Aunt  Una  smiled,  and  again  there  was 
what  Ella  Marie  called  "  a  quirk  "  to 
it  that  she  felt  she  did  not  understand. 

"  He  stayed  here  a  while,  and  then, 
by  and  by,  he  went  to  live  in  Boston, 
at  the  Zoo  in  the  Park." 

"  Why  did  you  give  him  away? " 
Ella  Marie  asked.  "  Did  he  grow  too 
big?  " 

"  He  didn't  grow  at  all,  after  we  got 
him.  But  the  little  girls  grew;  and  by 
and  by  they  no  longer  cared  for  Jocko 
as  a  playmate." 

"  Was  he  much  fun  to  play  with?" 

As  they  talked,  Aunt  Una  was  help- 
ing Ella  Marie  dress;  not  that  Ella 
Marie  needed  much  help,  but  just  by 


LEFT  BEHIND  25 

way  of  sociability,  and  because  it  was 
not  every  day  that  Aunt  Una  had  some- 
one to  remind  her  of  the  little  girl  she 
used  to  be  and  the  little  girl  she  never 
had. 

When  Ella  Marie  was  ready,  they  went 
downstairs  into  the  sunshiny  room  where 
Greatgrandmother  Parton  was  sitting. 


^  that  •  © « 
are  rrievde  of 


Fourscore-and-three  was  Greatgrand- 
mother  Parton  —  which  is  no  great 
age  now,  as  everyone  knows,  but  seemed 
greater  twenty  years  ago,  because  Great- 
grandmother  had  been  wearing  caps  and 
kerchiefs  and  considering  herself  an 
old  lady  for  forty  years  and  more.  She 
was  not  really  feeble,  but  thought  she 
ought  to  be;  so  she  kept,  for  the  most 
part,  to  her  arm-chair.  Ella  Marie 
had  never  before  known  anyone  of  ad- 
vanced age,  and  she  inclined  to  be  just 
26 


STUFF  O'  DREAMS  27 

a  little  bit  afraid  of  Greatgrandmother, 
as  if  the  gulf  of  years  that  yawned  be- 
tween them — more  than  a  Biblical  span 
were  too  wide  to  be  bridged.  Great- 
grandmother  knew  how  she  felt,  and 
was  content  to  await  developments. 

The  room  in  which  Greatgrandmother 
sat  was  one  Nannie  Risler  had  so  often 
described  in  her  "  When-I-was-a-little- 
girl"  stories,  that  Ella  Marie  thought 
she  would  have  recognized  it  if  she  had 
come  upon  it  "in  Africa  " — that  being 
her  usual  equivalent  for  the  uttermost 
parts  of  the  earth. 

It  was  an  east  and  south  room,  on  the 
left  of  the  hall  that  divided  the  old 
four-square  house;  back  of  it  was  the 
dining-room,  with  windows  opening  into 
the  garden;  across  the  hall  were  the 
parlors,  seldom  profaned  by  any  com- 
mon use,  and  kept  in  dignified  gloom. 
The  kitchen  was  in  an  ell.  Family  life 


28  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

centered  in  the  sitting-room  and  dining- 
room,  and — these  summer  days — in  the 
sheltered,  deep  garden  behind  the  house. 
In  the  sitting-room,  Greatgrand- 
mother  kept  those  of  her  cherished 
possessions  with  which  she  felt  on  the 
most  intimate  terms.  Over  in  the  dim 
parlors  there  were  high  cabinets  in  black 
and  gold  lacquer,  chairs  and  stools  in 
carved  teak  wood,  a  table  with  an  in- 
laid marble- top  from  Florence,  and  a 
a  mirror  in  a  fearfully  ornate  setting  of 
Venetian  glass;  there  were  carved  ele- 
phant tusks,  and  Chinese  embroideries, 
and  Persian  rugs,  and  big  cloisonne 
vases,  and  bronze  Buddhas,  and  Sat- 
suma  bowls.  Even  Nannie,  as  a  little 
girl,  had  never  felt  very  well  acquainted 
with  any  of  these  things.  There  was 
that  in  the  atmosphere  of  the  parlors 
which  made  them  like  a  museum.  You 
went  in  there,  sometimes,  if  you  were  a 


STUFF  O'  DREAMS  29 

roaming  little  girl  always  in  search  of 
mental  adventure;  you  marvelled  at  the 
strangeness  of  most  of  the  things,  and 
wished  you  might  have  heard  your  grand- 
father tell  tales  of  how  and  where  he 
got  them;  but  you  seldom  ventured  on 
your  own  account  to  "  make  up  "  stories 
about  them — it  scarcely  seemed  fitting 
somehow. 

But  the  sitting-room  was  different. 
It  had  the  Bay  of  Naples  wall-paper 
which,  in  many  a  New  England  house, 
invited  the  fancy  of  the  circumspect 
beholders  overseas  to  where,  in  the 
southern  sunshine's  warmth,  diapha- 
nously  draped  muses  dance  perpetually 
around  Virgil's  tomb,  and  great  galle- 
ons, their  strange  pinions  furled,  ride 
ever  at  anchor  beneath  the  smoking 
cone  of  grim  Vesuvius. 

From  one  of  those  marble  palaces 
whose  white  feet  were  languorously 


30  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

lapped  by  the  deep  blue  and  tideless 
sea,  must  have  come,  surely,  the  old 
Italian  desk,  or  scrutoir,  which  stood 
in  this  sitting-room,  its  faded  tints  and 
dulled  gilt  hinting  what  its  pristine 
splendor  must  have  been,  and  its  sliding 
panels  and  secret  drawers  suggesting  such 
"  missing  papers "  and  poison  powders 
and  love  philtres  and  other  things  as 
could  only,  with  true  appropriateness, 
have  happened  in  Italy  and,  most  fittingly 
of  all,  in  Naples.  Stowed  away  in  those 
hiding-places  which  had  once,  presum- 
ably, concealed  daggers  and  lost  wills 
and  poison  rings,  Greatgrandmother  had 
an  inexhaustible  store  of  such  stuff  as 
stories  are  made  of.  At  almost  any  turn 
of  the  conversation,  she  was  likely  to 
say:  "  If  you  will  open  that  littlest 
drawer  on  the  left,  near  the  top,  you 
will  find  so-and-so.  Bring  it  here,  and 
I'll  tell  you  about  it." 


STUFF  O'  DREAMS  31 

That  is,  thus  had  been  her  wont  when 
Nannie  was  a  little  girl;  and  thus,  Nan- 
nie had  felt  sure,  would  be  her  wont 
with  Ella  Marie. 

For  Greatgrandmother  had  been  to 
Naples,  on  her  wedding  journey.  It  was 
the  only  voyage  she  ever  made,  but 
its  glories  had  not  grown  dim  in  more 
than  threescore  years.  Indeed,  they 
seemed  to  grow  brighter,  as  these  quiet, 
fireside  years  went  by;  and  she  loved, 
as  she  sat  here  knitting  or  doing  other 
things  befitting  a  very  old,  old  lady 
to  think  what  an  adventurous  soul  hers 
was,  and  how,  though  her  body  creaked 
and  was  fain  for  ease,  her  spirit  still 
leaped  and  strained  at  its  leash  and  was 
eager  for  far  foray.  And,  to  look  at 
her,  with  her  blue  eyes  beaming  kindly 
and  her  white  hair  smoothed  so  meekly 
and  her  shriveled  cheeks  pink  with  the 
healthfulness  of  a  careful,  cambric-tea 


32  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

life,  you  would  never  have  guessed  what 
joy  it  was  to  her  to  remember  that  she 
had  been  down  in  that  crypt  of  the 
Castel  Nuovo  where  are  the  petrified 
bodies  of  the  strangled  bishop  and  the 
dismembered  general  and  the  headless 
lady;  that  she  had  stood  near  the  spot 
whence  Tiberius  caused  his  ex-favorites 
to  be  hurled  into  the  sea;  that  she  had 
once  seen  a  real  Corsair,  and  had  once 
been  witness  to  an  exciting  capture,  by 
the  Naples  harbor  police,  of  a  smuggler. 

But  Greatgrandmother's  interests  were 
not  all  sanguinary.  Suppose  it  chanced 
to  be  the  walnut  what-not,  instead  of 
the  polychrome  scrutoir  from  which  she 
directed  you  to  bring  something.  That 
"  something "  would  be  from  under 
seas,  not  from  over.  There  we* :  sea- 
urchins  and  star-fish  and  abalone  shells; 
there  was  a  sea-horse  from  the  Indian 
ocean,  and  a  sea-anemone  that  had  once  un- 


STUFF  O'  DREAMS  33 

folded  its  delicate  "  flower  "  in  the  bed  of 
Gloucester  Bay.  And  there  were  branches 
of  coral — some  that  looked  like  mush- 
rooms, and  one  that  looked  like  a  human 
brain,  and  one  that  was  like  a  fairy- 
fine  point-de-Genes  fan.  Greatgrand- 
mother  could  tell  marvelous  tales  about 
the  wonderland  that  lies  fathoms  deep 
beneath  the  keels  of  ships. 

But,  during  the  few  days  of  Nannie's 
stay  Greatgrandmother  had  been  so 
eager  to  hear  the  details  of  the  pro- 
jected tour  that  there  had  been  little 
time  to  repeat  any  of  those  so-familiar 
tales  with  which  Nannie's  ardor  for  this 
journey  had  first  been  fed. 


Ella  Marie  dreaded  sitting  at  the 
breakfast  table  opposite  that  vacant 
place  where,  yestermorn,  her  own  dear 
mother  sat.  But  it  seemed  that  she 
was  not  expected  to.  Aunt  Una  asked 
her  if  she  would  mind  presiding  at  the 
coffee  urn!  Now,  if  there  was  anything 
in  the  entire  world  that  Ella  Marie 
had  more  eagerly  desired  than  to  turn 
the  spigot  of  a  silver  urn  under  which 
a  tiny  alcohol  flame  burned,  and  pour 

cups  of  fragrant   coffee   for   other   folks 
34 


STRANGE  CARGOES  35 

to  drink,  I  am  not  able  to  say  just  what 
it  was.  Of  course  she  had  not  men- 
tioned this  desire  to  anyone — certainly 
not  to  Aunt  Una.  Therefore,  it  must 
have  been  by  the  merest  chance,  and  not 
with  any  idea  of  diversion,  that  Aunt 
Una  made  this  request.  (But  not  only 
had  Aunt  Una  once  been  ten:  she  had, 
at  ten,  known  that  identical  coffee- 
urn;  but  she  had  never,  at  ten,  been 
invited  to  preside  behind  it,  although 
she  had  often  made  wistful  computa- 
tions of  just  what  the  consoling  power 
of  this  privilege  would  be.) 

Ella  Marie  was  glad  she  had  not  died 
before  breakfast;  and  when  Aunt  Una 
asked  her  if  she  would  mind  presiding 
thus  every  morning,  Ella  Marie  hoped 
that  her  decline  might  not  be  too  hasty. 

After  breakfast,  Aunt  Una  had  house- 
keeping tasks  to  attend  to,  and  Great- 
grandmother  returned  to  her  chair  in 


36  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

the  south  bay-window  of  the  sitting- 
room.  Ella  Marie  followed  her.  She 
was  suddenly  mindful,  once  more,  of 
her  lone  condition:  she  didn't  "  know  a 
soul  "  in  Gloucester  except  these  two  old 
ladies,  and  she  didn't  have  "  a  single 
thing  to  do."  At  home,  there  were  al- 
ways so  many  things  to  do  that  she 
could  never  do  all  of  them  she  wanted  to. 
Here,  there  was  nothing!  True,  she  had 
promised  that  she  would  "  practice  "  at 
least  an  hour  every  day.  But  that  was 
only  one  hour,  and  there  would  be — 
she  calculated — about  nine  more  hours 
with  not  a  thing  to  do  in  any  of  them. 
Instead  of  putting  off  practicing  because 
she  hated  it,  she  thought  she  would  post- 
pone it  to-day  so  as  not  to  "  have  it 
over  with;  "  so  as  to  have  "something 
to  look  forward  to!  " 

Thus    disconsolate,    she    stood  in    the 
sitting-room,    a    pathetically   "  strange " 


STRANGE  CARGOES  37 

little  creature,  purposeless  and  rudder- 
less. 

Greatgrandmother  watched  her  for  a 
few  moments,  knowing  exactly  how  the 
child  felt,  but  not  knowing  exactly  what 
to  do  about  it.  Then  she  said,  looking 
out  through  the  open  window  and  speak- 
ing as  if  to  herself  rather  than  to  any- 
one else: 

"Well,  well!  it's  a  fine  day  to-day. 
I  wonder  will  my  ship  come  home!  " 

Ella  Marie  looked  at  Greatgrand- 
mother. "  Have  you  a  ship?  "  she  said. 
"  I  didn't  know—  " 

"Thought  I  was  too  old — didn't  you, 
dearie?  " 

"No,  not  at  all,"  Ella  Marie  hastened 
to  say;  but  her  tone  was  more  polite 
than  convincing. 

"  You  always  have  'em,"  Greatgrand- 
mother went  on,  smiling  whimsically, 
"but  the  cargoes  change." 


38  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

Of  course!  Ella  Marie  didn't  know  a 
great  deal  about  ships,  but  she  knew 
that:  "  the  cargoes  change." 

"When  I  was  a  little  girl,"  said  Great- 
grandmother,  "  I  used  to  be  sad  quite 
often,  when  my  father  sailed  away. 
And  the  girls  who  were  my  friends 
most  of  'em  had  sea-faring  fathers, 
too.  But  we  were  always  looking  for 
them  to  come  back,  and  bring  us  gifts 
from  far  countries,  and  tell  us  tales  of 
all  they'd  seen.  When  you  got  up, 
of  a  morning,  you  never  could  tell 
whose  ship'd  come  home  that  day.  It 
was  exciting — being  on  the  lookout  all 
the  time.  I've  often  thought  life  must 
be  mighty  dull  for  folks  that  don't  live 
near  the  sea — but  I  s'pose  they  have 
their  own  ways  o'  lookin'  for'ard.  They 
must  have!  Everybody  must!  But,  say 
your  father  just  walks  a  half  a  mile 
into  town  to  his  store  or  office,  an' 


STRANGE  CARGOES  39 

comes  home  to  dinner  every  noon — 
it  can't  be  as  excitin'  and  full  o'  thrills 
as  when  he  goes  sailin'  far  away,  and 
you  spend  days  an'  days  lookin'  for'ard 
to  his  home-comin'." 

"  But  he  might  never  come,"  objected 
Ella  Marie  who,  however,  was  growing 
interested. 

"  Oh,  of  course!  But  he  most  always 
did.  And  I  knew  a  girl  whose  father 
worked  in  the  custom  house,  and  one 
noon  when  he  was  goin'  home  to  eat 
his  dinner,  a  brick  fell  on  his  head  an' 
killed  him  instanter.  To  be  sure,  we 
used  to  worry,  some,  about  our  men 
when  they  was  gone.  But,  lookin'  back, 
now,  I  can  see  that  it  only  give  us  a 
better  relish  for  gettin'  them  home  again. 
And  I  wouldn't  for  anything  have  missed 
those  days  when  we'd  hear  that  our 
ship'd  been  sighted,  and  such  a  flutter 
as  there'd  be — rushin'  to  the  pantry 


40  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

to  take  stock,  and  makin'  things  spick 
an'  span,  and  gettin'  ourselves  to  the 
wharf  to  see  'em  come  in.  And  then 
the  sitting  around,  and  hearing  all  about 
it,  and  the  giving  out  of  presents.  I 
always  feel  sorry  for  those  that  haven't 
anything  like  that  to  look  back  to." 

"  And  who've  you  got,  now,  on  your 
ship  that's  coming  in? "  Ella  Marie 
asked. 

Greatgrandmother  sighed.  "  That's 
it,"  she  said,  "  when  you're  eighty- three 
you  don't  have  anybody  much  on  'em, 
like  you  used  to  do — the  ones  you  used 
to  look  for  are  gone  where  'there  shall 
be  no  more  sea';  you  can't  look  for 
'em  to  come  to  you  any  more,  but  you 
look  for'ard  to  goin'  to  them.  The 
ships,  though — there  are  always  ships — " 

"Real  ships?  " 

"Well,  depends  on  how  real  you  make 
'em." 


STRANGE  CARGOES  41 

"But  you  mean  p'tend  ships." 

"Do  I?" 

"Don't  you?" 

Greatgrandmother  laughed. 

"  Tell  you  what,"  she  explained; 
"when  folks  are  as  old  as  you  or  as 
young  as  me,  they  can't  hardly  tell 
p'tend  ships  from  real  ones.  .  It's  all 
in  what  you  mean  by  real.  The  Glori- 
ana  brought  me  many  things  that  made 
me  very  glad.  There  isn't  any  Gloriana 
any  more;  but  if  there  was,  she  couldn't 
bring  the  things  my  ship  is  bringing 
now — maybe  because  she's  be  too  real 
— maybe  because  she  wouldn't  be  real 
enough." 

"Aren't  they  real  things — now?  " 

"Well,  of  course  they're  real  to  me; 
but  you  wouldn't  know  what  to  do  with 
'em  if  they  was  to  happen  to  get  to  you 
by  mistake." 

"Wouldn't  I?" 


42  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

Greatgrand mother  almost  giggled. 

"Lan'  sakes,  no!"  she  cried.  "I  tell 
you  what  let's  do:  let's  play  load  ship." 

"I  don't  know  how,"  confessed  Ella 
Marie;  but  it  was  obvious  that  she 
was  eager  to  learn. 

"Why,  you  just  pretend  that  you 
have  a  ship — that  you  own,  and  can 
send  anywhere  you  choose,  and  tell  the 
captain  to  get  you  whatever  you  want 
in  all  the  world.  I  think  it's  nice  to 
have  your  ship  named;  mine's  always 
called  the  Gloriana — I  never  change  her 
name." 

"I  think,"  said  Ella  Marie,  after  due 
deliberation,  "that  mine's  called  the — 
the  Nancy  Lee" 

"That's  fine!  Now  what  do  you  want 
her  to  bring  you?  " 

"A  Shetland  pony,— the  littlest  Shet- 
land pony — black — and  a  weensy  pony 
cart—  " 


STRANGE  CARGOES  43 

"Yes;  and—?" 

"And  a  white  Angora  mother-cat, 
with  four  little  white  kittencats,  with 
blue  eyes  and  fluffy  tails —  " 

"Yes;  and—?" 

"And  a  dog  named  Shep — a  good, 
kind  dog,  what  won't  let  anybody  hurt 
you—  " 

"And—?" 

"And  a  little  white  lamb, — a  real  one; 
and  a  tame  monkey;  and  a  parrot — 
I've  got  a  canary! — and  some  pink  kid 
slippers  and  blue  kid  slippers — pale  blue 
— and  some  blue  stockings  and  pink 
stockings;  and  a  pink  and  a  blue  sash 
— and  a  lot  of  hair  ribbons — and  a  little 
gold  bracelet  with  a  padlock  on  it 
and  a  teensy-weensy  key,  and  a  ring  with 
a  turquoise  in,  and  a  locket  and  chain, 
and  a  tricycle,  and  a  whole  bunch  o' 
bananas,  and  a  lot  of  candy — but  I 
wouldn't  eat  it  all  at  once — and  a  baby 


44  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

sister,  and  a  doll-house  with  stairs  inside, 
and  little  furniture,  and  a  new  doll- 
buggy  for  my  baby-doll,  and  about  a 
hundred  story-books  —  all  the  Alcott 
books  and  some  others — " 

"I  hope  the  Nancy  Lee's  a  good, 
big  ship,"  laughed  Greatgrandmother. 
"  And,  dearie  me!  where  are  you  going 
to  put  all  these  things  when  you  get 
them?  " 

"  I  guess  she'll  have  to  bring  me  nails 
and  boards,  to  build  a  new  house," 
Ella  Marie  answered,  delighted  with 
the  game.  "  And  some  new  furniture 
for  it,  and  a  horse  and  buggy  for  Mamma 
to  drive,  and  a  stable  to  keep  them  in, 
and  a — and  a  new  job  for  Papa,  so  he 
can  pay  all  the  bills!  " 

"Now  it's  my  turn,"  declared  Great- 
grandmother;  "and  I  hope  the  Gloriana, 
if  she  comes  sailing  in  to-day,  will  bring 
me  something  that'll  limber  up  my 


STRANGE  CARGOES  45 

poor  old  joints  a  bit,  so  my  body  isn't 
such  a  lot  older  than  my  other  feelin's. 
And  I  hope  she'll  bring  me  something 
else  that'll  keep  me  from  waking  up 
at  four,  every  blessed  mornin'  and  stay- 
in1  awake.  And  I  hope — " 

Ella  Marie's  eyes  were  dancing. 
"What  a  funny  ship  yours  is!"  she 
cried.  "I  think  mine's  lots  nicer." 

"/  don't!"  protested  Greatgrand- 
mother,  laughingly.  "At  least,  not  for 
me.  What  would  /  do  with  a  Shetland 
pony,  and  pink  kid  slippers,  and  a  doll- 
house  with  stairs  inside?  " 

"  And  what  would  /  do  with  your 
limber-medicine?  "  squealed  Ella  Marie, 
jumping  up  and  down  in  glee. 
"Wouldn't  it  be  awful  if  our  ships 
got  mixed?  If  you  got  mine,  and  I 
got  yours!" 

Greatgrandmother  made  the  most  of 
what  her  consternation  would  be  were 


46  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

the  Nancy  Lee  to  come  sailing  home  to 
her,  and  Ella  Marie  laughed  till  she 
cried,  fancying  the  Gloriana  unloading 
for  her  benefit. 

It  was  a  delightful  game;  and  after- 
wards Greatgrandmother  told  her  some 
lovely  stories,  and  they  got  to  be  the 
best  of^friends.  But,  just  when  Great- 
grandmother  was  flattering  herself  that 
she  was  pretty  good  company  for  a  child 
of  ten,  the  child  grew  suddenly  wistful. 

"  I  forgot  the  most  important  thing 
for  Nancy  Lee  to  bring  me,"  she  said. 

"You  did?    What  is  it?" 

"Somebody  to  play  with,"  answered 
Ella  Marie. 


Nannie's  desire  that  many  of  the 
most  precious  things  might  not  come 
to  Ella  Marie  until  she  had  been  very 
wistful  for  them,  was  fulfilled  in  the 
matter  of  youthful  companionship;  none 
that  attracted  Ella  Marie  presented  itself, 
for  what  seemed  to  her  a  very  long 
time. 

Meanwhile,  another  of  her  mother's 
desires  for  her  was  realized  in  the  effect 
on  Ella  Marie  of  the  old  house  and  its 
dream-evoking  treasures.  With  Great- 

47 


48  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

grandmother's  stories,  and  Aunt  Una's 
stories,  to  give  her  the  initial  stimulus, 
she  soon  learned  to  create  for  herself 
a  much  richer  kind  of  story  than  she 
had  ever  "  made  up"  before.  But,  the 
more  she  listened  to  the  tales  of  her 
elders,  the  less  was  her  inclination  to 
offer  them  in  return  any  of  her  stories. 
She  felt  that  she  perfectly  understood 
them  and  all  that  they  told  her;  but  it 
was  her  impression  that  by  no  means 
could  she  make  herself  and  her  imag- 
inings comprehensible  to  them.  They 
were  very,  very  kind,  and  they  were 
wonderfully  entertaining — there  could  be 
no  question  as  to  that! — but  they  were 
looking  at  life  from  one  end  of  it,  and 
Ella  Marie  was  looking  at  it  from  an- 
other. That  wasn't  quite  the  way  she 
explained  it  to  herself.  But  it  was  what 
she  felt.  Whenever  one  of  her  fancies 
grew  too  beautiful  to  be  longer  kept 


"BUCK"  49 

for  her  own  delectation  only,  and  she 
was  tormented  with  the  second  desire 
of  the  creator,  the  desire  to  test  the 
appealingness  of  his  creation,  she  re- 
membered Greatgrandmother's  Gloriana 
with  its  cargo  of  ointment  for  the  creak- 
ing joints  of  Age.  How  could  she  tell 
the  Gloriana1  s  owner  about  the  mad, 
mad  cruises  of  that  rakish  craft  the 
Nancy  Lee? 

Nor,  she  felt,  was  there  among  the 
youngsters  she  had  met  here  in  Gloucester, 
one  with  whom  she  would  care  to  go 
very  far  in  the  exchange  of  confidences. 

"Seems  to  me,"  said  Greatgrand- 
mother,  discussing  the  matter  with  Aunt 
Una,  "  that  there  are  plenty  of  nice 
children  for  her  to  play  with — those 
that  live  here,  and  all  the  summer  visi- 
tors. She  ought  to  be  able  to  find 
someone  she  likes!  " 

"There    are    always    plenty    of    nice 


50  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

people,"  Aunt  Una  replied,  "but  the  ones 
that  could  be  happy  together  don't 
always  find  each  other,  or  they  don't 
learn  how  to  discover  their  companion- 
ableness  to  each  other.  There  are  lots 
of  folks  who're  not  very  demanding — 
'most  any  kind  of  a  human  being's 
company  for  them.  Sometimes  I  envy 
them;  but  usually,  I  don't;  because, 
while  'most  any  kind  of  a  human  being 
might  be  good  company,  not  many  of 
them  are?  They  waste  so  much  of 
life  on  things  of  no  account.  I  sym- 
pathize with  Ella  Marie.  She's  got  some 
idea  of  what's  worth  while  to  her,  and 
she's  holding  out  for  it — I  respect  her!  " 

No  one  would  ever  have  selected  him 
to  fill  Ella  Marie's  needs,  and  no  one 
would  ever  have  suspected  that  he 
would  tolerate  her;  but  they  found 
each  other. 


"BUCK"  51 

He  was  "going  on  fourteen,"  and  big 
for  his  age — sturdy  of  build  and  temper. 
His  hair  was  the  chestnut  brown  that 
is  one  remove  from  auburn,  and  he 
had  very  large  eyes  of  a  tawny  color 
more  common  among  dogs  than  among 
humans.  He  was  so  freckled  that  the 
boys  in  school  called  him  "  Rain-in- the- 
face,"  and  so  taciturn — at  times — that 
when  they  passed  him  they  would  grunt 
and  say,  "  Heap  big  grouch." 

One  of  the  first  things  to  embitter 
life  for  him  was  his  name:  it  was  Clar- 
ence, and  he  loathed  it.  As  soon  as  he 
could,  he  licked  every  fellow  that  called 
him  by  it.  At  the  time  he  met  Ella 
Marie  no  fellow  under  sixteen  "  dast 
to  call  "  him  anything  but  Buck.  And 
as  not  many  fellows  over  sixteen  conde- 
scended to  call  him  at  all,  he  was  Buck 
Masters  to  most  of  his  world. 

There  were  other  things  that  had  em- 


52  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

bittered  life  for  Buck.  Some  of  them 
he  knew  about,  and  some  he  only  felt 
but  could  not  analyze.  One  of  these 
latter  was  a  sort  of  truculence  of  manner, 
wherewith  Buck  sought  to  hide  from 
the  world  the  fact  that  he  was  not  a 
truculent  person  at  all.  The  less  belli- 
cose he  felt,  the  more  belligerent  was  his 
behavior.  Something — perhaps  it  was 
being  called  Clarence,  perhaps  it  was 
other  parental  mistakes — had  developed 
in  him  very  early  in  life  a  defensive 
attitude  which  easily  became  offensive. 
He  was  so  ready  for  war,  all  the  time, 
that  he  was  liable  to  declare  it  on  the 
slightest  pretext.  And  yet,  beneath  or 
behind  all  this  truculence  lay  the  real 
desire  of  Buck's  soul,  which  was  the 
desire  for  worship — not  to  be  worshipped ! 
he  would  have  scorned  that  as  he  scorned 
"Clarence";  but  to  worship,  to  have  a 
hero,  to  pour  out  upon  some  superb 


"BUCK"  53 

god  the  boundless  devotion  of  which 
he  felt  himself  capable.  To  feel  that 
you  were  designed,  and  dowered,  for 
the  kind  of  devotion  which  had  made 
others  food  for  endless  story-books,  and 
not  to  be  able  to  find  a  hero  on  whom 
you  can  demonstrate,  is  cause  for  bitter- 
ness indeed.  Buck  had  this  cause,  and 
others. 

One  of  the  others  was  giving  him 
great  unhappiness  on  the  morning  when 
Ella  Marie  came  into  his  life.  A  young 
man  who  taught  in  the  Gloucester  High 
School  (where  Buck  had  just  finished 
his  freshman  year)  had  organized  a 
small  party  of  High  School  boys  to  go 
camping  in  the  Maine  woods.  The 
party  was  to  strike  into  the  wilderness, 
and  blaze  trails,  and  hunt,  and  fish, 
and  live  by  their  own  efforts  as  much 
as  possible. 

Buck    had    been    invited    to   go,    but 


54  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

couldn't  accept  because  of  the  expense; 
and  he  was  "  sore  " — terribly  sore!  No; 
he  wasn't  sore  on  his  father,  exactly; 
he  knew  that  his  father  worked  hard 
and  had  a  severe  struggle  to  support 
five  children.  But  he  was  sore  on  the 
general  management  of  the  world.  For 
here  was  he,  of  prowess  almost  undis- 
puted, left  in  Gloucester  to  rage  and  fret 
the  long  summer  through,  while  one  of 
the  boys  who  had  gone  was  that  silly 
little  Earl  Peters ;  his  parents  had  coaxed 
him  to  go  and  had  outfitted  him  with 
everything  conceivable  in  the  way  of 
rod  and  gun  and  camp  equipment; 
yet  Buck  knew  that  Earl  was  terrified 
of  bears  and  would  far  rather  have 
stayed  at  home  and  gone  to  picnics. 
There  was  certainly  a  lot  of  mismanage- 
ment in  the  universe. 

Cheated    of    the    pastime    of    killing 
bears — in  which  he  felt  that  he  would 


"BUCK"  55 

have  excelled — Buck  found  himself  sour 
on  all  the  ordinary  sports  of  summer 
vacation.  These  things  no  longer  in- 
terested him — perhaps  because  his  most 
particular  cronies  had  gone  to  the  Maine 
woods.  So  he  addressed  himself  to  the 
business  of  earning  some  money,  to  the 
end  that  he  might,  in  another  summer, 
camp  where  the  bears  were  plenty. 

It  was  in  the  pursuit  of  gold,  for  these 
ends,  that  he  met  Ella  Marie.  She  was 
just  through  with  her  task  of  coffee- 
pouring,  one  morning,  when  Juliza  stuck 
her  head  in  at  the  "  slide  "  (as  they 
called  the  little  window  through  which 
food  was  passed  from  the  pantry  to  the 
dining-room)  and  asked: 

"Want  any  clams,  Miss  Parton?" 

"Clams?"  said  Aunt  Una.  "Who 
wants  to  know?" 

"A  boy  at  the  back  door;  says  he 
just  dug  'em." 


56  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

"Well,  I  don't  know,"  answered  Aunt 
Una.  "I'll  go  and  see." 

Ella  Marie  went,  too. 

"Why,  I  declare!  How  do  you  do?" 
cried  Aunt  Una,  when  she  saw  Buck. 
"I  didn't  know  you'd  gone  in  business." 

Her  tone  was  so  free  from  patronage 
of  any  sort  that  Buck  forgot  to  be  de- 
fensive. 

"I've  just  begun,"  he  admitted. 

Aunt  Una  examined  the  clams  critic- 
ally— thereby  still  further  commending 
herself  to  Buck — and  bought  them. 

"I'll  take  the  lot,"  she  said.  "When- 
ever I  see  a  good  mess  of  clams  I  put  up 
a  bit  of  juice  for  broth  in  winter;  Moth- 
er's so  fond  of  it." 

"  I  can  get  you  some  more,  to-morrow," 
Buck  suggested.  "I'm  going  in  the 
business,  this  summer,  if  there's  enough 
in  it." 

"Do  you  ever,"  spoke  up  Ella  Marie, 


"BUCK"  57 

"  find  anything  that — that  ain't  clams? 
I  mean,  anything  like — well,  like  a 
chambered  nautilus  or  a  sea-anemone?  " 

"  Well,  I  haven't  yet,"  answered  Buck, 
whose  experience  was  limited  to  one 
morning,  though  his  manner  was  far 
from  betraying  that  fact.  "  But  I'm 
li'ble  to." 

"If  you  do,  will  you  save  it  for  me?" 
begged  Ella  Marie,  eagerly.  She  was 
bent  upon  a  "what-not"  of  her  own, 
at  home,  with  denizens  of  the  deep 
upon  its  several  shelves. 

"Sure,"  he  agreed,  handsomely. 

"This  is  Buck  Masters,  Ella  Marie," 
said  Aunt  Una.  "His  mother  used  to 
play  with  your  mother  when  they  were 
both  little  girls.  Maybe  if  you  took 
Buck  into  the  sitting-room  and  showed 
him  some  of  your  Grandmother's  col- 
lection, he'd  get  a  better  idea  what  you 
want." 


58  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

Buck  went.  His  manner  was  con- 
descending, but  Ella  Marie  did  not 
seem  to  mind.  Perhaps  she  had  some 
way  of  knowing  that  "  inside  of  him" 
he  was  not  feeling  condescending  at  all, 
but  was  very,  very  shy,  and  very  fearful 
that  this  little  girl  would  find  it  out. 

Greatgrandmother,  who  had  not  yet 
left  the  dining-room,  consented  to  go 
thence  into  the  garden,  so  that  Ella 
Marie  might,  without  self-consciousness, 
discourse  upon  the  treasures  of  the  what- 
not. 

Buck's  interest,  however,  leaped  quick- 
ly from  the  what-not  to  the  scrutoir. 
He  had  seen  what-nots  before,  and  fan- 
shaped  coral,  but  he  had  never  before 
seen  the  like  of  that  desk.  And  this 
girl  was  a  nice  little  thing.  What  a 
lot  she  knew  about  daggers  and  poisons 
and  pirates!  A  fellow  could  talk  to  a 
girl  like  that!  She'd  understand. 


Buck's  business  languished — not  all 
at  once,  but  gradually.  If  a  companion- 
ship is  very  satisfying  it  is  likely  to  be 
very  absorbing;  associations  that  one 
can  dominate  or  surrender  to  at  will, 
are  not  very  vital.  The  friendships  by 
which  we  grow,  which  really  mean  any- 
thing in  our  lives,  are  those  to  which 
we  give  pretty  much  everything  that  we 
have;  unless  they  require  that  much, 

they  don't  seem  to  serve  us  greatly. 
69 


60  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

Buck  never  quite  abandoned  his  man- 
ner toward  Ella  Marie,  and  she  never 
swerved  from  her  first  comfortable  as- 
surance as  to  just  what  it  revealed  and 
what  it  sought  to  hide.  Practically 
everybody  else  in  his  [world,  not  except- 
ing his  mother,  found  Buck  "  difficult." 
Ella  Marie  found  him  the  easiest  person 
to  get  on  with  that  she  had  ever  met. 

She  did  not  know  to  what  straits  he 
was  brought  by  his  fondness  for  her 
society  and  his  fierce  determination  not 
to  let  anyone  suspect  it.  She  never 
guessed  how  full  of  ingenious  explanations 
and  devious  evasions  was  the  "  double 
life  "  Buck  lived  on  her  account. 

Nothing,  however,  could  be  less  accus- 
ing than  the  manner  of  Aunt  Una  or  that 
of  Greatgrandmother;  they  had  agreed 
that  the  children  should  not  be  made 
self-conscious  if  they  could  prevent  it. 
So,  what  with  that  and  with  the  safe 


COMPANIONSHIP  61 

screen  from  observation  that  the  Parton 
house  and  garden  provided,  Buck  and 
Ella  Marie  passed  there  a  great  deal  of 
their  time  together. 

Not  once,  in  many  days,  had  Ella 
Marie  thought  of  her  untimely  end. 
But,  as  August  wore  on  and  the  letters 
from  abroad  began  to  speak  of  home- 
coming, Ella  Marie  was  frequently  made 
very  sad  by  another  thought:  the  im- 
pending separation  from  Buck. 

Of  course  she  wanted  to  see  her  par- 
ents; but  every  joyful  anticipation  of 
their  return  was  soon  clouded  with  the 
reflection  that  in  the  very  midst  of  wel- 
coming them  she  would  have  to  say  good- 
bye to  Buck. 

While,  as  for  Buck,  he  was  being 
made  so  savage  by  the  same  prospect, 
that  anybody  on  earth  but  Ella  Marie 
would  have  been  eager  to  escape  from 
him. 


62  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

The  homeward-bound  Rislers  were  due 
in  Boston  on  a  Tuesday,  late  in  August. 
On  the  Saturday  before,  Buck  and  Ella 
Marie,  each  heavy  of  heart  because 
next  Saturday  more  than  a  thousand 
miles  would  separate  them,  were  in  the 
Parton  sitting-room. 

It  was  a  very  warm  day.  Great- 
grandmother  was  taking  her  after-din- 
ner nap.  Aunt  Una  was  "doing  up" 
peaches. 

The  house  was  many  degrees  cooler 
than  out-of-doors,  and  gratefully  dim. 

Aunt  Una  had  gathered  up  Ella  Marie's 
short,  fair  curls  and  pinned  them  in  a 
knot  at  the  crown  of  her  head.  This 
made  her  look  very  grown-up,  she 
thought,  and  she  was  trying  to  act  ac- 
cordingly. When  Aunt  Una  had  pinned 
the  curls,  she  bent  and  kissed  Ella  Marie 
in  the  dear  little  place  at  the  back  of 
her  neck  which  the  curls  usually  hid. 


COMPANIONSHIP  63 

Buck  saw  her  do  this,  and  blushed. 
He  didn't  know  why  he  blushed,  but 
he  thought  it  was  because  he  remem- 
bered how  wicked  he  had  been:  he  had 
wished  that  the  ship  Ella  Marie's  par- 
ents were  on,  would  go  down,  "with 
all  on  board."  Then  Ella  Marie  would 
live  with  the  Partons,  always.  When 
Buck  got  to  reflecting  on  this,  he  realized 
that  it  was  "the  same  as  murder" 
he  had  "wished  them  dead."  He  "took 
it  back"  very  promptly,  then  —  so 
promptly  that  he  was  hopeful  no  real 
damage  had  been  done.  But  he  blushed 
when  he  remembered  it,  and  when  he 
thought  of  Ella  Marie's  even  knowing 
it,  he  "went  white  and  cold,"  even  on 
this  perspiring  day.  There  were  many 
things  about  him — chiefly  in  his  past, 
he  hoped — that  it  would  be  dreadful  for 
Ella  Marie  to  know.  And  there  were 
many  things  in  his  present  feelings  that 


64  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

he  felt  no  less  constrained,  though  for 
different  reasons,  to  keep  sedulously 
concealed  from  her.  It  was  a  very  dis- 
ingenuous young  person  who  talked 
with  such  apparent  candor  of  dungeons 
deep  and  daggers  sharp  and  pirates  bold, 
yet  was  so  constantly  on  guard  lest 
dreadful  secrets  escape  him.  It  must 
be  fine,  he  thought,  to  be  a  dear  little 
creature  like  Ella  Marie,  with  nothing 
to  conceal,  no  blustering  "  part "  to 
play. 

And  Ella  Marie,  who  played  a  differ- 
ent "part"  every  few  minutes,  like 
the  most  versatile  of  protean  actresses, 
(but  was  less  conscious  of  her  "art" 
because  each  part  seemed,  more  than  all 
others,  her  "real  self")  was  very  patient 
with  Buck's  clumsiness  at  pretence. 

"Let's  get  out  th'  atlas  an'  see  where 
our  ships're  at,"  Ella  Marie  suggested. 
It  was  a  favorite  diversion. 


COMPANIONSHIP  65 

Buck  fetched  the  big  atlas  and  spread 
it  open  on  the  sitting-room  floor.  Then 
he  and  Ella  Marie  sprawled  on  the 
floor  beside  it. 

"Ooch!"  said  Ella  Marie.  "My  el- 
bows hurt." 

Buck  got  her  a  pillow  for  them — and 
blushed.  It  made  him  so  mad  to  blush, 
even  though  Ella  Marie  did  not  appear 
to  notice  it,  that  before  he  resumed  his 
own  sprawling,  he  kicked  Greatgrand- 
mother's  footstool. 

Ella  Marie  seemed  to  think  this  was 
mere  clumsiness,  and  she  laughed  at  it 
—laughed  in  the  one  way  which  a  male 
creature  can  bear  to  be  laughed  at  by 
the  female  who  finds  favor  in  his  eyes; 
there  was  no  sting  in  the  laughter,  but, 
rather,  a  kind  of  balm.  It  seemed  to  say: 
"  You  great,  big  Clumsy,  you!  What  else 
could  anyone  "expect  from  a  man  of  your 
prowess,  your  bulk,  your  invincibility?  " 


66  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

Restored  to  good-humor  by  her  ad- 
miring giggle,  Buck  took  command  of 
the  situation. 

"Look!"  he  cried.  "Here's  Borneo! 
The  Bully  Buccaneer  's  at  Borneo."  The 
Bully  Buccaneer  was  his  ship. 

"What's  she  getting  you?"  demanded 
Ella  Marie,  whose  ideas  of  Borneo  were 
hazy. 

"Getting  me  a  wild  man — that's  where 
they  come  from." 

"Ooh!  What  you  goin'  to  do  with 
him?" 

Thereupon  Buck  let  loose  his  imagina- 
tion. 

"I  don't  like  your  ship  at  a///"  Ella 
Marie  declared. 

"Ho!"  he  sniffed.  "What'd  I  do 
with  a  silly  ship  like  the  Nancy  Lee,  all 
full  of  kid  slippers  and  bracelets  and 
pussy-cats?  " 

"An'  what,"  she  retorted,  promptly, 


COMPANIONSHIP  67 

"  'd  I  do  with  a  nasty  ship  like  the 
Bully  Buccaneer,  all  full  of  wild  men  and 
buckin'  bronchos  and  bloodhounds?" 

"I  guess  you'd  be  pretty  scairt  if  you 
saw  my  ship  come  in,"  he  chuckled. 

"I  guess  I  wouldn't  be,  either!"]  she 
cried.  But  she  was  a  conciliatory  little 
person.  "S'posin',"  she  went  on,  "s'pos- 
in'  my  Nancy  Lee  went  down — !  " 

Buck  felt  that  he  was  turning  "white 
as  anythin'."  How  could  she  know? 

" — went  down,  with  all  on  board — " 

Buck  clutched  wildly,  like  a  drowning 
man,  for  support. 

" — an'  none  of  it  ever  came  ashore — 
except  the  spars — ."  Ella  Marie  was 
enjoying  her  shipwreck  almost  as  much 
as  she  could  have  enjoyed  a  ship  safe 
in  port  with  all  her  treasures  on  it; 
and  she  was  thrilled  by  Buck's  evident 
anguish.  "S'posin'  there  wasn't  one  tween- 
ty-weenty  thing  saved — " 


68  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

"Aw!"  he  snapped,  so  fiercely  that  he 
scared  her,  "what's  the  use  of  sayin' 
that?" 

"I  was  on'y,"  she  replied,  with  chill 
dignity,  "I  was  on'y  goin'  t'ask  you — '' 
here  the  piteousness  of  that  which  she 
had  evoked,  brought  a  flood  of  tears— 
"t'ask  you  if  there  wouldn't  be  a  single 
thing  on  your  Bu — bully  Buc — ca — neer 
that  I — could  play  with!" 

"Why,  sure  there  would!"  he  cried. 
' '  You  know  yourself  there  would !  Didn't 
you  help  choose  most  of  'em?  You 
could  have  the  mustang  pony — I'd  tame 
him  for  you — and  the  parrot  that  swears, 
and  the — the — the  Indian  scout  that'd 
always  show  where  the  sweet  water  was 
—and  the—" 

But  she  could  not  wait  for  him  to 
finish. 

"An*  if  the  Bully  Buccaneer  went 
down,"  she  declared,  "  an'  the  Nancy 


COMPANIONSHIP  69 

Lee  didn't,  you  could  have  my  nice, 
kind  dog — he'd  be  fierce  when  anyone 
was  goin'  to  hurt  you — and  some  o' 
my  story  books,  and  all  the  candy  and 
bananas  you  want,  and  my — and  my 
gun—" 

"You  didn't  have  no  gun!"  protested 
Buck,  excitedly. 

"I  did  too!  I  got  it  th'  other  day— 
when  you  said  I'd  need  it  so  I  could  go 
in  the  woods  with  you  and  shoot  bears. 
You  know  you  did!" 

"I  forgot,"  he  admitted.  "But  it'd 
prob'ly  be  too  small  for  me,  an'  your 
dog'd  be  too  tame.  I  hope  I  don't  have 
to  get  mine  off  no  girl's  ship." 

Ella  Marie  was  hurt. 

"You  better  take  care!  she  retorted. 
"You  might  have  worse  'n  that;  you 
might  have  to  get  your  presents  off  a 
ship  like  the  Gloriana  that's  full  of  creak 
med'cine  an'  things  to  make  you  sleep!  " 


70  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

"  I  wouldn*  take  'em,"  he  asserted, 
stoutly. 

"Maybe  you'd  have  to,"  she  insisted. 

Buck  was  getting  angry.  No!  not 
at  Ella  Marie  nor  at  what  she  was  say- 
ing, but  at  Fate,  at  the  thing  that  was 
about  to  separate  him  from  this  enchant- 
ing little  person.  Not  being  analytic, 
Buck  did  not  know  the  cause  of  the  rage 
that  burned  within  him.  It  did  not  seem 
to  him  that  he  could  be  so  mad  at  Ella 
Marie.  It  must  be  the  game. 

"Aw!"  he  cried,  "what's  the  use? 
There  ain't  none  of  'em  goin*  to  come 
in — it's  all  pretend — we're  on'y  playin'." 

As  if  Ella  Marie  did  not  understand ! 

"I  know  we're  on'y  playin',"  she 
answered,  with  dignity.  "But  it's  one 
o'  those  things  where  the  p'tend  is  real, 
too — not  all  real,  but  some — like  fairy 
tales.  They'  ain't  all  made  up  out  o' 
nothin' — they're  made  up,  but  they're 


COMPANIONSHIP  71 

true,  too — not  exackly  true,  but — but — 
You  ast  anybody  that  knows,  an'  see 
if  they  ain't  true!" 

"I  don't  have  to  ask  anybody,"  he 
said,  matching  her  dignity  with  a  very 
capable  brand  of  his  own;  "  I  know  what 
you  mean — like  Pilgrim's  Progress — it 
wasn't  a  real  pack  or  a  real  slough, 
but  it's  truer  than  anythin' — 7  know 
what  you  mean,  all  right!  " 

"I've  heard  lots  of  grown-ups  say  it: 
'When  my  ship  comes  in,'"  Ella  Marie 
went  on.  "  'Tain't  just  a  children's 
game." 

"The  grown-ups  don't  really  mean 
anything  when  they  say  that,"  he  ob- 
jected. "  It's  just  a  kind  of  joke." 

"How  d'  you  know  it  is?"  she  de- 
manded. "How  d'  you  know  they 
don't  hope  they  got  somethin'  nice  comin' 
to  'em  from  far  away?  Maybe  they 
don't  mean  a  ship  exackly,  but  they 


mean  somethin'  that  they're  hopin' 
for!" 

"Maybe  they  do,"  he  agreed. 

"Let's  play  what  we  hope,"  she  sug- 
gested. She  was  always  thinking  of 
new  things  to  do. 

"How?"  he  asked. 

Ella  Marie  didn't  know;  she  was 
"makin'  it  up"  as  she  "went  along." 

"Like  'I  love  my  Love  with  an  A— 
because  he's  so  Amusin',"  she  said; 
"But  not  just  like  that!  Let's  say: 
'I  hope,  I  hope  for  an  A — a-an  animal 
cracker ' — but  not  for  an  animal  cracker, 
of  course." 

This  proved  quite  entertaining.  When 
they  reached  N  it  was  Ella  Marie's 
turn. 

"I  hope,  I  hope  for  an  N,"  she  began, 
a  little  shyly,  "I  hope  for  a  Nother 
summer  in  Gloucester — with  Granny  an' 
Aunt  Una— an'— an'  YOU,  Buck!  " 


COMPANIONSHIP  73 

"That  ain't  an  N,  that's  an  A," 
Buck  objected — covering  his  emotion 
thereby. 

"Then  I'll  hope  it  for  Next  summer!" 
said  Ella  Marie,  "sing-songing "  her 
words  happily,  quite  undismayed — and 
undeceived — by  Buck's  chilling  recep- 
tion of  her  "  hope." 

Buck  had  never,  in  all  his  life,  wanted 
to  do  anything  so  much  as  he  wanted 
to  say:  "  I  hope  so,  too."  But  it  stuck 
in  his  throat.  Perhaps  that  was  what 
made  his  voice  so  husky  as  he  went  on 
with  the  game,  saying: 

"I  hope,  I  hope  for  an  O — for  an 
ourang-outang ! ' ' 

"Oh,  Buck!  You  don't,  either!"  pro- 
tested Ella  Marie. 


g 

n 

eri^eecry  Later 

r^ 

§ 

The  next  summer,  Ella  Marie's  baby 
sister  came,  and  that  made  Gloucester 
out  of  the  question.  And  the  summer 
after  that  brought  the  World's  Fair, 
when  everyone  in  Chicago  stayed  home 
and  entertained  visitors. 

By  that  time,  Ella  Marie's  intense 
eagerness  to  see  Buck  had  waned — 

just  as,  if  her  parents  had  tarried  two 

74 


TEN  YEARS  LATER  75 

years  in  Europe,  she  would  have  learned 
long  ere  the  two  years  were  over,  to  live 
her  life  without  them  and  to  long  for  them 
only  in  a  very  temperate  way.  Human 
nature  desires  to  repeat  the  pleasant- 
nesses it  has  known :  there  are  few  things 
we  have  read  or  heard  or  seen  or  tasted, 
with  keen  enjoyment,  that  we  are  not 
more  or  less  wistful  to  know  again. 
But  not  many  of  these  longings  are 
acute — especially  while  we  are  young, 
and  the  natural  course  of  our  desire 
is  for  the  untried. 

Ella  Marie  often  thought  of  Buck, 
and  occasionally  she  wrote  to  him.  She 
had  no  one  in  Chicago  with  whom  she 
played  quite  so  happily  as  she  had 
played  with  him;  yet  there  was  always 
the  possibility  that  some  new  acquaint- 
ance would  develop  into  a  comradeship 
as  delightful  as  his  had  been,  or  even  more: 
so  she  did  not  pine  for  him,  although  she 


76  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

had  her  disconsolate  days  when  nothing 
seemed  to  please,  and  she  couldn't  help 
wishing  that  Buck  lived  in  Chicago. 

She  asked  him,  in  one  of  her  letters 
if  he  was  not  coming  to  the  Fair.  But 
Buck  replied,  tardily,  that  he  would 
"  not  be  able  to  attend  the  Exposition, 
as  I  am  going  to  work  in  June,  when 
school  is  out."  His  father,  he  went 
on  to  say,  had  been  ill  for  several  months, 
with  inflammatory  rheumatism,  and  was 
not  well  yet.  Probably  Buck  would 
not  go  to  school  any  more,  but  would 
stay  on  in  the  office  of  the  commission 
house,  "if  I  can  hold  down  the  job.'* 
"That  is,"  he  concluded,  "unless  my 
ship  comes  home.  If  it  does,  I'm  going 
to  Harvard  in  two  more  years." 

But  it  didn't  come  home;  and  Buck 
found  that  he  was  able  to  "hold  down  the 
job" — also,  that  it  would  be  necessary 
for  him  to  do  so.  Earl  Peters  was 


TEN  YEARS  LATER  77 

going  to  Harvard,  though — if  his  parents 
could  induce  him  to! 

Things  were  miserably  "messed  up" 
in  this  world,  Buck  felt.  But  he  did  not 
say  much. 

He  thought  of  Ella  Marie  sometimes, 
and  always  with  pleasure  in  the  recol- 
lection. What  a  captivating  little  com- 
panion she  had  been!  In  his  thoughts 
she  was  always  ten;  and  as  he  passed 
his  sixteenth  birthday  and  tipped  the 
butcher's  scale  at  130  pounds,  he  began 
to  feel  very  far  removed  from  Ella  Marie. 
Of  course,  he  knew  that  she  also  was 
growing  older;  but  he  could  not  imagine 
her  twelve  years  old  and  ready — as  she 
wrote  him — for  High  School. 

Meanwhile,  though  he  was  not  much 
interested  in  his  "job,"  and  had  still 
to  reflect  on  the  irony  of  Earl  Peters's 
parents  coaxing  him  to  enter  Harvard, 
life  was  not  wholly  without  its  pleasant 


78  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

aspects  for  Buck.  He  had  one  grand  pas- 
sion :  baseball ;  and  enough  minor  passions 
to  keep  his  days  from  being  savorless. 

Later,  when  he  was  about  eighteen, 
he  had  an  ambition  to  wreck  feminine 
hearts,  wholesale.  But  Buck  was  en- 
tirely without  subtlety  or  finesse,  and 
did  not  realize  that  while  it  is  entirely 
possible  to  do  a  wholesale  business  in 
romance,  it  is  necessary  to  be  very, 
very^expert  in  the  matter  of  making 
each  victim  believe  herself  the  only  one 
you  ever  truly  sought;  you  may  parade 
all  the  others  in  a  way,  but  you  must  do 
it  deprecatingly — as  if  you  wished  the 
sillies  had  not  hurled  themselves  at  your 
feet.  Ignorant  of  this,  Buck  paid,  at 
one  time,  equal  court  to  at  least  six 
girls  all  of  whom  knew  one  another  as 
well  as  they  knew  him.  He  hoped  to 
start  a  very  conflagration  of  jealousy; 
but  none  of  the  girls  took  him  seriously. 


TEN  YEARS  LATER  79 

After  that,  he  was  rather  sulky  about 
all  females  for  quite  a  while,  and  the  one 
real  solace  of  his  life  was  "the  doings 
on  the  diamond."  The  bitterness  that 
was  his  portion  became  more  than  ever 
like  gall  and  wormwood,  about  this  time, 
by  reason  of  the  desperate  falling-in- 
love  of  his  chum,  Ranee  Osgood,  and  the 
consequent  ruination  of  Ranee  for  any 
chumming  uses.  It  would  have  been 
bad  enough,  in  any  case;  but  as  it  was, 
the  girl  for  whom  Ranee  had  "gone 
booby,"  was  the  last  girl  in  Gloucester 
for  whom,  in  Buck's  opinion,  any  fellow 
with  a  grain  of  sense  should  demean 
himself.  And  the  girl,  suspecting  Buck 
of  opinions  leaning  that  way,  had  been 
able  to  make  Ranee  see  that  his  one-time 
Pythias  was  far  from  worthy  of  his 
companionship. 

Buck   was   so   disgusted   with    Ranee 
Osgood's    behavior    that    he    registered 


80  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

some  rather  awful  vows  as  to  what  he'd 
do  before  he'd  let  a  girl  make  such  a  fool 
of  him. 

Altogether,  his  disposition,  about  the 
time  he  cast  his  first  vote,  was  not  angelic. 
He  was  restless — restless — restless — full 
of  desire  to  do  something,  but  not  at  all 
sure  what  it  was  that  he  wanted  to  do. 

Two  more  years  dragged  by — oh !  they 
were  not  without  their  hours  of  pleasant- 
ness and  their  days  of  quasi-compromise 
with  conditions  that  must,  apparently, 
be  endured;  but  they  dragged,  none  the 
less,  because  they  were  without  a  big 
purpose.  Lots  of  little  purposes  will 
keep  us  frittering  along  after  a  fashion; 
but  it  is  the  big,  controlling  purpose 
that  gives  zest  to  life.  Nobody's  un- 
fortunate who  has  a  goal  he's  straining 
to  reach;  and  nobody's  fortunate  who 
hasn't  one.  Buck  was  not  "  focussed  " 
yet,  and  he  was  miserable. 


TEN  YEARS  LATER  81 

When  Greatgrand mother  was  ninety- 
three,  her  ship  came  in  and  took  her 
away — to  where  most  of  those  she  had 
loved  and  lost  awhile  were  waiting. 
It  was  sunset  and  evening  star,  and 
one  clear  call  for  her,  and  there  was  no 
moaning  at  the  bar  when  she  put  out  to 
sea. 

Ella  Marie  was  there  when  the  call 
came.  Aunt  Una  had  written  to  Nannie 
and  asked  if  it  would  be  possible  for 
either  Ella  Marie  or  her  to  come. 

"I  am  seventy,"  she  wrote,  "and  I 
have  never  known  the  old  house  without 
Mother's  presence.  I  can  see  that  she 
is  going  away.  I  try  to  feel  resigned — 
but  it  is  going  to  be  very,  very  lonely, 
sitting  here  and  watching  her  slip  away 
from  me.  Do  you  think  you  could 
come — either  of  you?  " 

As  it  happened,  Nannie  was  loath  to 
go  away  and  leave  Rob;  he  had  not 


82  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

been  sleeping  well  and  was  in  a  "  fagged  " 
and  nervous  state  due  to  some  business 
strain.  She  felt  that  he  needed  her. 
But  Ella  Marie  could  go,  and  she  did. 
She  was  not  exactly  eager  about  it, 
but  she  was  willing. 

Ella  Marie  was  fortunate:  she  had 
a  Grand  Purpose.  Going  to  stay  with 
Aunt  Una  during  Greatgrandmother's 
last  days,  was  not  serving  the  Grand 
Purpose,  but  it  was  not  clouding  her 
vision  of  it,  nor,  necessarily,  delaying 
her  realization.  So  Ella  Marie  went, 
happily  enough. 

Her  Grand  Purpose  was  to  be  a  singer. 
Not  just  "  to  sing,"  mind  you,  but  to 
"  be  a  singer,"  a  great  singer — operatic, 
of  course,  since  that  seemed  the  way, 
in  part  at  least,  of  the  greatest  singers. 
She  had  been  studying  for  three  years, 
and  everybody  said  she  had  a  future. 
Having  a  future  is  so  much  more  de- 


TEN  YEARS  LATER  83 

lightful  than  having  any  kind  of  a  pres- 
ent that  it  is  almost  a  pity  to  change 
from  one  tense  into  the  other.  But 
of  course  nobody  believes  that  until 
after  the  change  has  been  made.  There 
wasn't  a  prima  donna  living  who  had 
half  so  glorious  a  time  as  Ella  Marie 
was  always  seeing  herself  about  to  have. 
But  probably  there  wasn't  one  who  would 
have  exchanged  with  her  if  she  could — 
gold  for  visions,  fame  for  youth,  power 
for  hope.  It  is  curiously,  comfortingly 
true  that,  whatever  our  idle  fancies  may 
be,  most  of  us  are  content  to  go  on. 

Greatgrandmother  was  content  to  go 
on.  She  had  not  the  slightest  wish, 
as  she  looked  at  Ella  Marie,  to  be  twenty 
again  and  bound  for  Naples  in  the 
Gloriana;  much  less  to  be  twenty  and 
facing  a  Grand  Career  on  the  operatic 
stage.  She  had  loved  life,  and  found 
it  very  good;  but  she  was  well  content 


to  be  going  on.  Indeed,  she  was  more 
than  that ;  she  had  a  sense  of  this  where- 
into  she  was  now  passing  as  The  Great 
Adventure,  as  well  as  the  perfect  Home- 
coming. She  was  ninety-three,  and  she 
had  a  long  retrospect;  but  her  vision 
was  on  the  way  ahead. 

Ella  Marie  was  at  an  age  when  we  are, 
perhaps,  less  sensitive  to  things  outside 
our  own  selves  and  purposes  than  at 
any  other  time;  but  she  was  not  una- 
ware of  the  state  of  Greatgrandmother's 
feelings  in  those  last  days,  nor  of  the 
struggle  Aunt  Una  was  having,  to  keep 
her  horror  of  aloneness  from  shading 
her  mother's  serenity  of  soul. 

"  It's  like  when  you  were  first  here," 
she  said  to  Ella  Marie,  "  and  were 
trying  so  hard — how  well  I  remember! 
— not  to  let  your  mother  suspect  how 
you  dreaded  to  have  her  go." 


It  was  while  that  hush  of  waiting  en- 
wrapped the  house,  that  Buck  made 
his  first  call  on  Ella  Marie.  He  hated 
it  like  the  deuce.  Not  that  he  was 
altogether  without  willingness  to  see 
Ella  Marie — although  there  was  a  cer- 
tain self-conscious  awkwardness  about 
that,  which  he  dreaded — but  he  had 
perhaps  even  a  little  more  than  the  aver- 
age big,  healthy  young  male  creature's 
aversion  from  death. 

It  was  a  Saturday  afternoon  when  he 
85 


86  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

called,  scarcely  less  warm  and  golden 
than  the  long-ago  Saturday  when  he 
and  Ella  Marie  had  played  "  I  hope, 
I  hope  with  an  A."  Everything  in  the 
world  outside  that  house  which  was 
his  destination  was  intensely  alive,  with 
the  animation  of  nature  in  June,  when 
she  is  so  superabundantly  vigorous  and 
young.  There  is  still  a  delicacy  about 
her  in  May — one  has  occasional  qualms 
for  her  forth-puttings,  lest  some  ad- 
versity be  too  much  for  their  untried 
endurance.  But  in  June,  one  no  longer 
fears  for  the  new  life  in  the  world;  it 
seems  to  have  established  itself;  more, 
it  seems  to  fill  the  universe.  One  scarce- 
ly thinks,  yet,  of  parturition,  much  less 
of  decline  and  death;  August's  full 
shocks  of  yellow  grain  seem  almost 
as  remote  as  the  requiem  of  November's 
winds  and  the  pall  of  December's  snows. 
Buck  was  three-and-twenty,  past,  and 


12,500  MILES  AWAY  87 

passionately  eager  to  believe  in  life,  to 
find  it  generous  and  good.  His  ability 
to  analyze  his  feelings,  and  to  express 
them,  did  not  noticeably  transcend  what 
it  had  been  ten  years  ago.  Nor  had  he, 
in  those  years,  learned  anything  con- 
siderable about  squaring  himself  with 
his  world.  He  was  still  young  enough 
to  be  waiting,  none  too  patiently,  for 
the  world  to  take  due  cognizance  of  him. 
Yet,  he  was  getting  on.  Witness,  this 
call.  Every  instinct  of  his  vigorous 
youth  made  him  dread  this  house  where 
Death  was  hovering.  But  something 
in  him,  which  was  not  "  convention " 
nor  any  other  concession  to  appearances 
or  opinion,  made  him  feel  that  he  ought 
to  come;  that  there  were  things  in  the 
world  which  must  outweigh  his  horror 
of  the  shadows;  and  that  to  dodge 
those  things  would  be  to  become  a  skulk- 
ing coward.  Buck  had  made  a  similar 


88  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

decision  some  seven  or  eight  years  ago, 
when  he  took  home  from  an  evening 
party  a  girl  whose  way  lay  past  a  grave- 
yard. He  ran  all  the  way  back,  after 
leaving  her  at  her  gate,  and  his  heart 
was  in  his  mouth.  But  it  was  an  im- 
portant night  for  him.  And  this  after- 
noon he  was  showing  that  unwillingness 
to  skulk  from  a  horror  was  still  part  of 
his  spiritual  equipment. 

Ella  Marie  opened  the  door  for  him, 
and  he  was  rather  taken  aback.  He 
had  imagined  himself  sitting,  in  the  par- 
lor, perhaps,  awaiting  her  and  wondering 
what  he  should  say  in  greeting.  It  was 
disconcerting  to  confront  her  before  he 
had  quite  decided  what  to  say.  And  he 
had  not  counted  on  Ella  Marie's  readiness 
to  begin  without  assistance  from  him. 

"Why!"  she  cried,  delightedly,  "I 
believe  you're  Buck.  How  do  you  do? 
I'm  ever  so  glad  to  see  you." 


12,500  MILES  AWAY  89 

She  led  the  way  into  the  sitting-room. 
The  shutters  were  closed,  but  the  room 
was  not  dark — only  gratefully  dim,  and 
cool.  Nothing  was  changed.  The  sea- 
treasures  on  the  what-not;  the  old 
scrutoir;  the  book-case  with  the  many 
volumes  of  voyages  and  other  travels, 
and  the  atlas  and  the  books  on  naviga- 
tion and  on  the  stars;  Vesuvius  still 
smoking;  the  Muses  still  dancing  around 
Virgil's  tomb;  the  strange,  great  gal- 
leons still  riding  at  anchor  in  Naples' 
matchless  Bay.  Greatgrandmother's  chair 
in  the  south  window  was  vacant,  as 
when  she  took  her  naps,  but  the  room 
was  very  full,  as  always,  of  her  presence 
— there  was  nothing  to  suggest  that  she 
lay  upstairs  waiting  for  the  tide  to  ebb 
and  bear  her  out  to  sea. 

"How  familiar  it  all  looks!"  Buck 
remarked.  "Did  you  ever  get  your  sea- 
urchin?" 


90  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

She  laughed.  "No.  And  I  hadn't 
thought  of  one  in  years,  till  I  came  back 
here.  Do  you  remember  how  we  used 
to  love  playing  in  here?  And  oh!  do 
you  remember  about  the  wild  man  from 
Borneo?  I  don't  suppose  you  ever  got 
him?  " 

"No,  I  never  did.  The  Bully  Bucca- 
neer hasn't  been  sighted  for  along  time." 

"Nor  the  Nancy  Lee.  Wouldn't  it 
be  awful  if  they  should  come  in?  " 

"Me  with  my  wild  man  and  my 
bucking  bronchos  and  my  ourang-out- 
ang,  and  my  fine  young  arsenal — " 

"And  me  with  my  doll  house  with 
stairs  inside,  and  my  sashes  and  pink 
kid  slippers!" 

They  were  delighted  with  these  recol- 
lections of  their  youthful  selves.  How 
very,  very  young  they  had  once  been! 

"  I  don't  suppose  you  ever  think — 
of  ships  coming  in,  and  things  like  that, 


12,500  MILES  AWAY  91 

any  more,"  Ella  Marie  said,  in  her 
most  casual  tone.  In  order  to  renew 
acquaintance  with  Buck  it  was  neces- 
sary to  know  as  soon  as  possible  where 
he  stood  with  regard  to  certain  things. 

Buck  wished  he  knew  what  he  ought 
to  say,  but  her  tone  gave  him  no  clue. 
Suppose  he  admitted  to  her  that  he 
still  indulged  in  day-dreams,  and  she 
laughed  at  him!  If  he  must  take  a 
chance,  it  were  better  to  err  the  other 
way.  So  he  smiled  his  most  business- 
burdened  and  cynical  smile. 

"When  I  think,  now,  of  ships  coming 
in,  I  think  of  how  many  tons  of  cod 
or  haddock  or  mackerel  they've  got, 
and  things  like  that,"  he  answered, 
with  the  tone  of  a  man  who  has  long 
since  ceased  to  cherish  any  fancies. 

Ella  Marie  was  disappointed. 

"Do  you?"  she  said.  "It  doesn't 
sound  like  much — much  fun." 


92  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

"It  isn't,"  he  confessed.  "I  loathe 
it!" 

Her  face  brightened.  A  man  who 
liked  to  think  about  tons  of  cod  and 
mackerel  would  have  been  impossible 
to  her  as  a  companion.  Indeed,  a  man 
who  was  at  all  contented  with  his  job 
would  have  been  difficult  for  her  to  make 
friends  with,  then — not  that  she  es- 
teemed contentment  less,  but  that  she 
loved  adventure  more. 

"Why  do  you  do  it?"  she  cried, 
earnestly. 

"There  isn't  much  choice  around  here," 
he  replied;  "and  I  have  to  do  some- 
thing" 

"Of  course  you  have  to  do  something; 
but  you  don't  have  to  do  it  right  here, 
do  you?  The  world's  so  big  and  wide 
and  wonderful — it  must  be  full  of  things 
you'd  love  to  do.  Don't  you  ever  feel 
that  way? " 


12,500  MILES  AWAY  93 

Buck  looked  at  her  and  wanted  to 
hug  her — not  because  she  was  a  girl, 
and  twenty,  and  sweet;  he  was  only 
waking  to  consciousness  of  that;  but 
because  she  was,  evidently,  a  kindred 
spirit,  a  fellow-creature  to  whom  he  could 
unburden  his  heart. 

"Feel  that  way?"  he  echoed.  "Why, 
that's  the  only  way  I  do  feel.  All  the 
rest  of  me  is — is  nothing — without  feel- 
ing. Nobody  knows  how  I  hate  fish. 
I  don't  believe  anybody  ever  hated 
'em  like  I  do.  I — I  told  you  a  kind 
of  a — a  story  when  I  said  I  never  think 
of  the  Bully  Buccaneer— 

"You  didn't  say  you  never  thought 
of  her,"  she  objected,  helpfully. 

"Well,  when  I  tried  to  make  you  think 
I  didn't.  I  was  thinking  of  her  only  this 
morning  as  I  sat  down  there  in  my 
office,  reeking  with  the  smell  of  fish. 
It's  the  kind  of  a  day  when  you  can't 


94  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

help  feeling  how  beautiful  the  world 
is,  and  wishing  you  could  get  out  into 
it,  and  see  it  all,  and  never,  never  smell 
dead,  drying  fish  any  more  as  long  as 
you  live.  If  the  Bully  Buccaneer  could 
come  in,  now,  I  wouldn't  care  if  she  had 
lost  my  wild  man  overboard,  and  my 
bucking  broncho  had  died  of  the  pip. 
All  I'd  ask  'd  be  if  she'd  just  spread 
her  sails  and  take  me  about  12,500  miles 
from  here." 

"12,500 miles!    Where  to?" 

"I  don't  care.  That's  half  'round 
the  world,  isn't  it?  If  I  went  any 
further  I'd  be  on  my  way  home,  I  sup- 
pose." 

Ella  Marie  laughed. 

"Well,  I  don't  want  the  Nancy  Lee 
to  take  me  as  far  as  that"  she  declared. 
"I  want  to  go  to  Paris  and  to  Italy. 
I  want  to  go  to  Naples  and  Rome,  and 
to  Milan — to  La  Scala — and  to  Paris — 


12,500  MILES  AWAY  95 

to  the  Optra  Comique  and  to  the  Grand 
Optra.  I  want  her  to  come  sailing  in 
and  bring  me  money  for  lessons  and 
for  travel,  and  to  take  me  away — away 
— over  the  seas  to  where  everybody 
loves  art  and  song  and  all  kinds  of  beauty, 
and  your  heart  gets  so  full  of  the  joy 
and  loveliness  of  life  that  you  couldn't 
keep  from  singing  if  you  wanted  to!" 

Her  voice,  vibrant  with  eagerness, 
her  face,  alight  with  vision,  thrilled  Buck 
through  and  through. 

"  I  don't  know  exactly  what  it  is  I  want 
to  do,"  he  said,  "or  where  I  want  to 
do  it.  But  I  want  to  be  somebody, 
and  do  something,  and  I  want  to  get 
far,  far  away  from  here  —  from  fish, 
and  from  the  people  who  think  they've 
got  to  keep  on  treating  you  like  a  kid 
because  they  happened  to  know  you  when 
you  were  one.  I'll  tell  you  what,  Ella 
Marie:  this  New  England  atmosphere 


96  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

just  about  drives  me  to  drink.  I  be- 
lieve— honestly,  I  do! — that  if  I  had  to 
stay  here,  I'd  be  a  drunkard — I'd  have 
to.  Of  all  the  petty,  narrowminded 
people!  They  don't  know  anything,  or 
want  to  know  anything,  except  how 
wastefully  the  minister's  wife  peels  her 
potatoes  and  how  late  the  lawyer's  son 
stayed  at  the  gate  with  the  doctor's 
daughter  last  night.  I  want  to  get 
out  into  a  world  of  people  with  real, 
red  blood  in  'em,  and  some  interests 
besides  gossip — and  fish!" 

Just  then,  Aunt  Una  came  down- 
stairs and  into  the  sitting-room. 

"I  think  I  see  a  change  in  Mother," 
she  said.  "I  knew  you  were  here,  Buck, 
and  I  thought  you'd  go  for  the  doctor— 

"Why,  of  course!"  he  answered.  "Dr. 
Semple,  I  suppose?"  and  an  instant 
later  he  was  gone. 


Buck  came  back  with  the  doctor. 
He  did  not  want  to  be  there,  partly  for 
fear  of  intruding  and  partly  because  he 
dreaded  a  harrowing  scene;  but  it  did 
not  seem  just  right  not  to  go  back 
and  offer  his  services,  although  he  hoped 
they  would  be  declined. 

Ella  Marie  came  to  the  door  again,  in 
answer  to  his  ring,  and  she  was  crying. 

When  Buck  saw  her  tears,  he  wanted 

to  flee,  and  yet — more  than  he  wanted 
97 


98  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

to  flee,  he  wanted  to  be  of  any  comfort 
to  her  that  he  could. 

"Shall  I  —  come  in  —  or  go  away?" 
he  whispered  to  her. 

Ella  Marie  laid  her  hand  appealingly 
on  his  arm. 

"Come  in,  please,"  she  said. 

And  Buck  would  have  gone  had  it 
been  a  fiery  furnace  into  which  she  bid 
him. 

The  doctor  went  upstairs. 

"Is  there  anything  else  I  can  do?" 
Buck  asked. 

She  shook  her  head. 

"Not  now — that  I  know  of — thank 
you.  Gramma  seems  to  be  slipping 
away  quite  fast.  I — I  feel  so  strange, 
Buck — so  full  of  awe.  I've  never  been 
so  near  it,  before.  It's  such  a  great, 
great  mystery.  I — I  like  to  know  you're 
here.  Wait,  while  I  go  and  see  what 
the  doctor  says." 


THE  GLOR1ANA  IS  SIGHTED     99 

He  watched  her  as  she  went  up  the 
stairs.  How  sweet  she  was!  How  ap- 
pealing! Then  he  went  into  the  sitting- 
room,  to  wait.  He  has  "never  been 
so  near  to  it,  before"  either. 

He  stared  at  the  what-not  with  its 
treasures  of  the  deep;  at  the  scrutoir 
full  of  curios;  at  the  old  books  Great- 
grandmother  had  loved  so  long  and  well ; 
at  the  Bay  of  Naples  wall-paper  which 
her  father  had  brought  from  overseas 
when  she  was  a  little  girl  of  twelve. 
She  had  never  known  any  home  but 
this;  for  she  was  the  only  one  of  the 
Andrews  children  to  survive  infancy, 
and  her  parents  could  not  bear  to  have 
her  go  to  a  house  of  her  own  when  she 
married.  Here,  where  she  had  come 
into  life,  she  was  going  out  of  it — after 
ninety-three  years.  Here  she  had  been 
courted  and  wedded,  and  here  her  chil- 
dren had  come  into  the  world,  and  hence 


100  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

two  of  them,  and  her  husband,  had 
passed  to  the  world  unseen. 

How  she  loved  this  house,  these  things 
of  precious  memories!  Buck  wondered 
if  she  was  loath  to  leave  them.  The 
sunshine,  piercing  the  joints  of  the  closed 
blinds,  lay  in  spots  of  brightness  on  the 
floor  and  reflected,  here  and  there,  from 
mahogany  or  glass  surfaces.  Was  she 
conscious  of  going  away  from  it  all,  from 
the  June-full  earth,  from  the  dear  home, 
from  her  treasures  and  from  those  who 
loved  her? 

After  a  while — a  long  while — the  doc- 
tor came  down  stairs,  and  went  out. 
Then,  in  a  little  while,  Ella  Marie  came. 
Her  face  wore  a  look  Buck  would  never 
forget — the  look  of  one  who  has  been 
very  near  to  a  great  mystery. 

"She  has  gone,"  Ella  Marie  said. 
"She  was — oh,  Buck.1  I  can't  tell  you 
how  awesome  it  was:  she  was  here  one 


THE  GLORIANA  IS  SIGHTED  101 

moment,  and  the  next,  she  was  gone — 
gone  so  far  away — beyond  recall.  She 
seemed  kind  of  sleeping,  when  I  went  up ; 
then,  by  and  by,  she  was  more  awake. 
She  said  things,  but  not  to  us — I  couldn't 
make  them  out.  Suddenly,  there  came 
such  a  look  in  her  face!  I  can't  de- 
scribe it.  And  she  cried  'Thaniel!' 
quite  clear,  and  very  joyfully — and  died 
with  the  glad  look  on  her  face.  '  Thaniel ' 
was  what  she  called  Greatgrandfather." 

Ella  Marie  was  trembling  violently; 
she  was  spent  with  emotion. 

Buck  forgot  the  years  in  which  they 
had  been  as  strangers;  he  forgot  that 
he  was  a  young  man  and  she  a  young 
woman,  now;  he  forgot  everything  but 
that  she  was  a  dear  comrade  and  that 
she  was  turning  to  him  for  the  comfort 
of  his  understanding.  He  took  her  in 
his  arms  and  held  her  close;  and  she 
wept,  with  her  face  against  his  breast. 


102  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

"Aunt  Una's  with  her,"  she  went  on, 
when  she  could.  "She  said  she  wan  ted 
to  be  with  her — alone ;  so  I  came  away. 
It  has  been  a  great  comfort  to  have  you 
here." 

She  was  very  sweet,  in  her  grateful- 
ness, and  not  at  all  self-conscious.  Fresh 
from  the  presence  of  the  so-great  mystery, 
she  was  not  thinking  of  Buck  as  a  young 
man.  He  was  a  tender  and  companion- 
able human;  and  he  was  young  and  big 
and  strong  and  very  much  alive. 

But  Buck,  who  had  opened  his  arms 
to  her  boyishly,  had  become  a  man  when 
he  felt  her  in  them.  Then,  suddenly, 
he  wanted  to  flee.  Something  in  him 
was  stifling  him;  he  must  get  away; 
he  must  get  where  he  could  breathe, 
and  think,  and  try  to  understand. 

"I'm — glad  I  could — be  here,"  he 
murmured.  "Let  me  know  if  there's 
anything  I  can  do." 


THE  GLORIANA  IS  SIGHTED  103 

He  knew  he  was  abrupt;  he  knew  that 
she  felt  him  to  be  so.  But  he  could 
not  tarry.  He  had  but  one  desire:  to 
go  far,  far  away,  where  no  one  could 
see  him  or  speak  to  him;  and  sit  down 
and  think,  and  think,  and  think. 


During  the  next  few  days,  Buck's 
desire  to  be  where  Ella  Marie  was,  to 
see  her  and  hear  her  speak,  was  equalled 
only  by  his  desire  not  to  be  alone  with  her. 
He  did  not  know  just  what  it  was  that 
he  was  afraid  of,  but  he  felt  that  before 
he  ventured  on  any  more  intimate  con- 
versation with  Ella  Marie  he  would 
better  know  what  it  was,  and  what  he 
should  do  about  it. 

He  was  very  helpful  to  the  two  women, 
in  the  hundred-and-one  things  that  re- 

104 


EXPECTANCY  105 

quire  attention  at  such  times;  and  the 
thought  of  being  able  to  serve  Ella  Marie 
thrilled  him  sweetly.  Yet  he  suffered 
a  quite  acute  terror  lest  she  unloose 
upon  him  a  flood  of  gratefulness  like  that 
she  had  dumbly  expressed  on  the  day 
Greatgrandmother  died. 

But  as  Ella  Marie  showed  not7the 
slightest  inclination  to  do  anything  of 
the  sort,  his  fear  gradually  faded. 

Greatgrandmother's  will  left  the  old 
house  and  all  else  that  she  owned,  to 
Aunt  Una  "who  shares  my  wish  that, 
after  her,  the  home  shall  belong  to  Nancy 
Risler  and,  in  due  course,  to  Ella  Marie 
Risler,  my  greatgranddaughter." 

And  Aunt  Una  told  Ella  Marie  how 
much  she  and  Greatgrandmother  had 
discussed  what  was  to  become  of  the  old 
home,  and  how  they  had  hoped  that  it 
might  stay  on  in  the  possession  of  those 
who  loved  it. 


106  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

She  did  not  tell  Ella  Marie  how,  ten 
years  ago  when  two  children  were  play- 
ing with  the  cherished  souvenirs  around 
which  three  other  generations  of  children 
had  built  their  fancies  and  fashioned 
their  dreams,  two  old  women  were  enter- 
taining sweet  hopes  that  some  day  the 
children  of  these  two  might  in  their 
turn  pore  over  the  old  books  of  voyag- 
ings  and  picture  for  themselves  the 
world  underseas  whence  came  the  treas- 
ures of  the  what-not. 

For  Aunt  Una  realized  that,  at  twenty, 
one  is  far  less  eager  to  conserve  what 
one's  elders  have  cherished  than  to 
adventure  in  spheres  of  which,  one 
thinks,  they  never  dreamed.  Ella  Marie 
would  love  the  old  home  some  day, 
Aunt  Una  felt  sure.  But  she  was  too 
wise  to  try  to  hasten  the  day;  for  she 
knew  such  things  must  take  their  own 
course. 


EXPECTANCY  107 

She  could  have  told  Buck  a  great  many 
things,  if  he  had  asked  her;  but  he 
didn't  ask. 

When  he  had  ceased  to  be  fearful  in 
Ella  Marie's  presence,  they  were  often 
together.  They  went  for  long  walks, 
Saturday  afternoons  and  Sundays;  and 
they  spent  many  evenings  te'te-a-te'te, 
after  Aunt  Una  had  retired. 

It  was  on  one  of  their  walks  that  Buck 
was  able  at  last  to  free  his  mind  of  that 
which  had  been  tormenting  him  since 
the  June  day  Greatgrandmother  died. 

He  and  Ella  Marie  had  wandered  away 
from  the  ordinary  paths  of  holiday- 
makers  and  summer  visitors,  and  found 
a  corner  in  a  little  cove  where  they  could 
feel  withdrawn  from  the  world  of  men. 

The  sea  was  very  blue,  and  white- 
sailed  pleasure-craft  fluttered  hither  and 
yon  on  it,  like  flocks  of  white  butter- 
flies. 


108  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

"Think,"  said  Ella  Marie,  "of  a  mul- 
titude of  sails  all  russet  and  yellow  and 
crimson — no  two  alike,  Mother  says. 
And  the  sea  and  sky  so  blue!  She  says 
it  isn't  just  poets'  fancy — the  Mediter- 
ranean being  bluer  than  other  seas. 
It  is  bluer!  And  she's  told  me  about 
the  Blue  Grotto  at  Capri,  where  it's 
like  being  in  the  heart  of  a  sapphire. 
Think  of  sitting  on  a  shore  where  history 
and  poetry  and  romance  and  art  have 
been  made  for  nearly  three  thousand 
years.  Think  of  Cumae,  and  of  Paestum ! 
of  Capri  and  Ischia!  Of  Vesuvius  and 
Pompeii!  of  Amalfi  and  Ravello!  Moth- 
er says  that  everybody  sings — the  street- 
venders,  the  goat-herds,  the  children, 
the  fishermen — everybody!  Life  is  so 
full  of  loveliness  it  overflows  in  song." 

Her  voice  was  vibrant  with  emotion. 

"Would  you,"  he  began — then  changed 
his  question  to  an  assertion:  "You 


EXPECTANCY  109 

would  be  very — miserable,  if  you  couldn't 
look  forward  to — to  seeing  all  that, 
and  to  study,  and  a — a  career." 

'Yes,"  she  said,  "I  would;  I  believe 
I'd  die — or,  anyway,  I  wouldn't  care  to 
live." 

"You  don't  think  there's  any  other 
— any  other  kind  of  a — a  ship  that  could 
bring  you  happiness?" 

"I  don't  know  what  you  mean,"  she 
answered.  But  perhaps  she  could  have 
guessed. 

"I  mean — well,  not  anything  in  par- 
ticular. But  if  there's  only  one  thing 
a  person  wants  to  do  in  life,  and  he 
doesn't  manage  to  do  it,  it's  pretty 
tough,  I  should  think.  I  wonder  if 
many  people  are  like  that  and  how  they 
feel  if  they  realize  that  they're  never 
going  to  do  the  one  thing  they  care  to 
do.  I  don't  mean  you,  of  course.  You'll 
do  it,  I  should  say.  But  there  must  be 


110  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

others  who  don't  do  it.  We  don't  know 
much  about  the  people  all  around  us — 
do  we?  I  wonder  if  most  of  them  once 
wanted  to  do  something,  to  be  something, 
to  see  something,  very,  very  much; 
and  if,  by  and  by,  they  kind  of  got  used 
to  not  doing  it,  or  being  it  or  seeing  it, 
and  learned  to  care  about  something 
else  —  that  they  could  have !  I  look 
around  our  office,  often,  and  wonder  if 
the  fellows  who've  been  there  for  years, 
for  a  lifetime,  hate  it  like  I  do,  and  wish 
for  their  Bully  Buccaneers  to  come  and 
take  them  12,500  miles  away  —  or  if 
they've  always  liked  it — or  if  they've 
learned  to  like  it — or  what!  I  used  to 
have  a  chum — Ranee  Osgood — and  he 
was  crazy  about  the  same  things  I  was 
— or  am.  But  he — fell  in  love,  and 
last  year  he  got  married.  And  now 
you  couldn't  get  wild  horses  strong 
enough  to  drag  him  away  from  that 


EXPECTANCY  111 

two-by-four  cottage  of  his,  and  his  wife 
and — baby." 

"Oh,  lots  of  people  are  like  that," 
Ella  Marie  declared.  "They  haven't 
any  real  ambition;  they  only  think 
they  have.  And  they're  very  easily 
diverted,  and  satisfied." 

"Ranee  thinks  I  haven't  any  real 
ambition!"  Buck  admitted,  laughing. 

Ella  Marie  had  drawn  up  her  knees  and 
clasped  them  with  her  hands,  and  just 
now  her  head  was  bent  forward  till  it 
rested  on  her  clasped  knees,  musingly. 
Buck  could  see  the  back  of  her  neck, 
and  suddenly  he  remembered  that  long- 
ago  day  when  Aunt  Una  had  pinned  up 
Ella  Marie's  curls  and  kissed  the  "  sweet 
spot  "  they  usually  hid — and  Buck  had 
blushed,  and  kicked  over  the  footstool. 

He  blushed  now;  but  Ella  Marie 
did  not  see  him. 

"  Don't  you  pay  any  attention  to  him," 


WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

she  said — meaning  to  Ranee  Osgood. 
"You  know  you'd  never  be  satisfied 
just  to  stick  here  all  your  life,  and  smell 
drying  fish,  and  never  see  anything! 
You'd  die!  Maybe  not  so  dead  they'd 
bury  you;  but  so  dead  you'd  wish  they 
would  I  Don't  you  know  you  would?  " 

"Yes,  mostly  I  do;  but  there  are 
times  when  I  think  maybe  I'm  foolish." 
These  "  times,"  he  might  have  told 
her,  but  did  not,  had  been  coming  to 
him  since  that  minute  when  he  held 
her  in  his  arms  and  felt  her  cling  to 
him.  And  the  question  they  brought 
was:  can  there  be  anything  in  life 
more  thrilling,  more  wonderful  than 
this? 

Then,  the  smell  of  drying  fish  would 
sicken  him;  his  inner  vision  would  show 
him  stoop-shouldered  office  men  hunch- 
ing themselves  endlessly  over  letters  and 
ledgers  full  of  dried  fish  and  fish  to  be 


EXPECTANCY  113 

dried — estimating  and  dickering  and  bar- 
gaining, forever  and  forever,  that  at 
each  month's  end  there  might  be  a 
pittance  to  pay  rent  and  doctor's  bills 
and  buy  coal  and  food  and  clothing. 

Had  they  all  sold  themselves  into  that 
drear  bondage  for  the  right  to  hold  a 
girl  against  their  beating  hearts  and 
to  kiss  the  nape  of  her  white  neck? 

"You're  just  like  the  little  boy  you 
used  to  be,"  she  chided,  charmingly. 
"Don't  you  remember?  We'd  be  play- 
ing 'When  my  ship  comes  in,'  just  as 
nice  as  nice  could  be ;  and  all  of  a  sudden 
you'd  say  'Aw!  there  ain't  goin'  to  be 
no  ship — really!'  And  I'd  have  to  get 
you  started  all  over  again — started  be- 
lieving." 

"  Yes,"  he  admitted;  "  you  did.  And 
you  always  knew  so  much  better  than 
I  did  just  what  you  wanted.  I  used  to 
'choose'  things  wildly,  lots  of  times, 


114  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

because  I  didn't  really  know  what  I 
did  want.  I  don't  know  yet!  That's 
what  bothers  me  so:  I  wonder  if  I  ever 
shall  know,  'for  sure'?" 

"I  should  think  you  would,"  she  an- 
swered. "  I  always  know,  and  I  always 
believe.  I'll  tell  you  what  let's  do: 
Let's  agree  to  meet  and  tell  each  other 
if  our  ship  has  come  in.  It  will  take 
my  Nancy  Lee  quite  a  while  to  bring 
the  fame  and  fortune  she  has  for  me. 
I  don't  really  expect  her  in  much  less 
than  ten  years.  Maybe  your  Buccaneer 
'11  get  in  lots  sooner.  But,  if  we  can, 
let's  try  to  tell  each  other  about  them. 
That'll  be  something  to  look  forward 
to." 

"All  right,"  he  agreed.  "It's  a  long 
'look' — but  there  may  be  glimpses  in 
between.  Here's  hoping!" 


There  is  no  other  blue  like  the  blue 
of  the  Mediterranean,  especially  in  the 
Bay  of  Naples  and  its  neighbor,  Salerno 
Bay.  Painters  may  lay  on  their  cobalt 
and  their  ultramarine  till  sober  folk 
who've  never  seen  those  waters  lament 
the  wild  excesses  of  painters'  fancy; 
yet  over  those  same  canvases  the  be- 
holder whose  memory's  haunted  by  his 
own  pictures  of  the  tideless  sea,  will 

115 


116  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

shake  his  head,  and  murmur:  "  They 
don't  get  it!  I  suppose  they  can't!  " 

And  so  with  the  oft-pictured  places 
around  those  blue,  blue  bays:  seen 
thousands  of  miles  from  Naples,  the 
pictures  move  one  to  the  skeptical  ejacu- 
lation "Aw!  there  ain't  no  sech  a  place!" 
But  face  to  face  with  the  reality,  how 
timid  the  pictures  seem,  how  inadequate! 

Buck  Masters  was  taking  tea  on  the 
Bertolini  terrace.  It  was  five  o'clock 
on  an  afternoon  in  early  May,  and  Buck 
had  been  a  sojourner  in  the  Old  World 
for  about  six  hours,  having  landed  that 
morning. 

On  the  terrace  were  a  number  of  his 
fellow-voyagers.  They  had  all  ordered 
tea,  but  although  it  was  good  tea  it  was 
getting  scant  appreciation.  If  it  had 
been  nectar  from  Olympus,  how  could 
it  have  diverted  attention  from  the  feast 
spread  for  the  eyes?  Everybody  was 


WHAT  CARGOES  CAME        117 

intensely  excited — some,  after  the  im- 
memorial division,  unto  volubility,  and 
some  to  speechlessness.  Buck  was 
speechless.  And  he  didn't  want  to  be 
talked  to;  he  wanted  toMook,  and 
think.  This  was  evident  to  his  fellow- 
passengers.  For  Buck,  though  he  was 
"goin'  on"  thirty-four,  was  not  notice- 
ably more  suave  than  when  he  was 
"goin'  on"  fourteen. 

He  was  seeing,  as  he  sat  with  his 
arms  on  the  railing,  and  his  chin  rest- 
ing on  them,  more — much  more! — than 
the  panorama  outspread  before  him. 
He  was  seeing  beyond  Baia  and  Ischia, 
thousands  of  miles,  in  the  track  of  the 
westering  sun — to  Gloucester,  Massa- 
chusetts; and  back,  over  a  sea  of  years, 
to  certain  long-ago  days  when  a  little 
boy  and  a  little  girl  played  in  the  Parton 
sitting-room  and  "made  up"  endless 
stories  about  the  Bay  of  Naples,  and 


118  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

what  they  desired  that  their  ships  might 
bring  in. 

And  now,  according  to  their  pact,  he 
was  come  to  see  what  cargoes  had  come 
to  her;  and  to  tell  her,  if  she  cared  to 
hear,  what  of  the  Bully  Buccaneer. 

She  had  been  singing  in  opera,  in  Rome, 
until  Lent  began;  then  had  filled  a  few 
concert  engagements  on  the  Riviera. 
And  from  Cannes  she  had  written  to 
Aunt  Una:  "When  I'm  through  here, 
I'm  going  down  to  Naples.  For,  in  all 
my  years  abroad,  after  all  my  longing, 
I  have  never  seen  Naples  Bay." 

Buck  had  meant  to  go  over  in  the 
summer,  but  when  he  heard  from  Aunt 
Una  about  Ella  Marie's  visit  to  Naples, 
he  stood  not  upon  the  order  of  his  going, 
but  went  at  once. 

No;  he  had  not  sent  her  word.  She 
had  told  Aunt  Una  to  write  her,  care  of 
Cook,  after  April  12.  Buck  went  to 


WHAT  CARGOES  CAME        119 

Cook's  as  soon  as  he  had  settled  him- 
self in  a  hotel  and  dispatched  a  most 
delicious  luncheon.  He  found  that  Ella 
Marie  was  living  not  far  from  his  hotel, 
in  a  pension  on  Parco  Margherita.  But 
she  was  away  on  an  all-day  trip — to 
Capua,  it  was  thought  at  the  pension. 
They  could  not  say  if  she  would  be  back 
to  dinner,  or  if  she  would  dine  at  Caserta 
and  return  in  the  evening. 

So  Buck  had  taken  the  "lift"  and  gone 
up  to  Bertolini's  where,  Baedeker  in 
hand,  he  had  identified  all  the  principal 
points  of  interest  in  that  panorama  which 
seems  to  pass  in  review  ten  thousand 
story-books  and  half  the  romance  of  the 
world. 

He  had  not  left  his  card  for  Ella  Marie. 
He  wanted  to  surprise  her.  It  seemed 
to  him  that  if  he  took  her  unawares  he 
would  be  better  able  to  guess  just  how 
glad  she  was  to  see  him. 


120  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

He  had  had  "glimpses"  of  her  in  these 
ten  years  past,  as  he  had  hoped.     Twice 
in  that  time  she  had  been  in  Gloucester 
to    visit    Aunt    Una;     they    were    brief 
visits,  but  they  had  served  to  keep  Ella 
Marie  in  touch  with  that  corner  of  her 
world.     The  last  one,  though,  was  nearly 
four  years  ago.     At  that  time  Ella  Marie 
had  begun  to  feel   that  she  was,   after 
more  than  four  years  of  foreign  study, 
beginning    to    draw    near    to    her    goal. 
She    had    not    been    home    since    then. 
Her  letters  to  Aunt  Una — who  financed 
this  pursuit  of  fame  and  fortune — told 
of  hard  work  and  more  hard  work  and 
then  harder  work;    they  told  of  a  good 
many    engagements,    too;     but    it    was 
not  possible  for  Aunt  Una  to  estimate 
what   further   lengths   of   toilsome   way 
stretched  between  such  engagements  as 
Ella  Marie  had  and  such  as  she  desired. 
Nor    was    Buck    able    to    guess.     Now 


WHAT  CARGOES  CAME 

and  then  he  read,  in  Boston  or  New 
York  papers,  that  Miss  So-and-So,  an 
American  girl,  had  made  her  debut 
last  night  at  Milan  or  Monte  Carlo 
or  at  the  Opera  Comique  in  Paris,  and 
had  "scored  an  instant  success."  But 
he  had  not  yet  heard  anything  of  the  sort 
about  Ella  Marie;  and  he  had  no 
idea  how  near  to  this,  or  how  far  from 
it,  she  was. 

Perhaps  the  Nancy  Lee  was  sighted, 
and  coming  into  port  with  fame  and 
fortune  aboard.  Perhaps  Ella  Marie 
would  be  too  absorbed  in  her  expecta- 
tions to  care  that  he  had  come  four 
thousand  miles  to  ask  about  them. 

But  this  was  Buck's  Great  Adventure, 
so  long  delayed;  and  he  liked  every- 
thing that  enhanced  its  adventurous- 
ness.  For  he  might  never  know  an- 
other. 

He  lingered  on  the  terrace  until  after 


WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

six,  then  went  down  in  the  "lift" — 
down  through  250  feet  of  rock,  like  the 
shaft  of  a  great  mine — and  stepped  out 
on  the  Corso  Vittorio  Emanuele  whence 
Naples,  except  for  its  very  modern  and 
semi-suburban  parts,  still  lay  far  below 
him. 

It  was  too  early  for  dinner,  and  too 
late  to  go  down  into  the  city  and  get 
back  by  dinner-time.  But  he  could  go 
to  Parco  Margherita  and  see  if  Ella 
Marie  had  come  back. 

She  had.  She  was  just  paying  her 
cab-driver,  and  telling  him  something 
in  Italian  nearly  as  voluble  as  his 
own. 

Buck  watched  her  until  she  turned 
to  go  in,  then  stepped  forward  and 
greeted  her. 

For  an  instant  she  looked  as  if  she 
thought  her  eyes,  her  ears,  were  playing 
her  some  strange  trick.  Then  she  cried: 


WHAT  CARGOES  CAME        123 

"Buck!"  and  held  out  both  her  hands 
to  him  in  a  pretty  gesture  that  was 
quite  Latin  and  perhaps  a  bit  operatic, 
but  none  the  less  sincere;  even  a  New 
Englander  like  Buck,  schooled  to  re- 
gard as  most  genuine  those  emotions 
which  are  unexpressed,  felt  the  warmth 
and  the  charm  of  it. 

Also,  more  unprepared  than  she  for 
explanations,  for  all  his  weeks  of 
planning  what  he  would  say,  he  gave 
instant  thanks  for  that  ease  of  manner 
in  her  which  seemed  to  make  all  ex- 
planations unnecessary.  There  he  was, 
and  she  was  whole-heartedly  glad  to 
see  him.  If  she  wondered  why  he 
had  come,  Buck  could  not  discover  as 
much. 

"You  nice  person!"  she  said,  beaming 
up  at  him.  "When  did  you  come? 
And  how  long  are  you  going  to  stay? 
And  oh !  could  anything  be  more  enchant- 


124  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

ing?  We're  going  to  see  the  Bay  of 
Naples  at  last — and  together!" 

"I've  just  come,  to-day,"  he  an- 
swered, "and  I'm  lonesomer  than  the 
deuce,  and  I'm  stopping  right  near 
here,  at  Parker's,  and  '  I  hope,  I  hope ' 
you  can  dine  with  me!" 

"You  get  your  hope,"  she  laughed,  gaily. 
"Shall  I  dress — or  just  wash  my  face?" 

"You  needn't  do  either  on  my  ac- 
count," he  protested.  "I  suppose  there 
are  places  where  we  may  eat  without 
being  togged  out?" 

"There  are — heaps  of  them!  In  fact, 
there  are  no  others,  here — nor  elsewhere 
in  Italy,  that  I  know  of.  It  is  difficult 
to  be  conspicuous  here — no  matter  what 
you  do!" 

"Have  you  anything  to  suggest?" 
he  asked. 

She  thought  a  moment. 

"It  depends,"  she  said,  "whether  you 


WHAT  CARGOES  CAME        125 

care  most  for  a  very  good  dinner  or  for 
a  wonderful  sight.  If  you  want  the 
dinner,  you'll  get  it  in  your  hotel.  If 
you  want  the  sight,  and  can  'make 
out'  with  a  plain  meal,  quite  Italian, 
I'll  take  you  to  a  place  high  up  under 
the  shadow  of  San  Martino,  where  we 
can  sit  out  of  doors  and  watch  the  after- 
glow creep  down  the  western  slopes  of 
old  Vesuvius,  and  the  lights  come  out, 
like  twinkling  stars,  in  the  dusk  that 
enwraps  Naples.  And  by  and  by,  if 
we  linger,  we  shall  see  the  moonlight — 
on  Naples  Bay." 

"  I  can  eat  anywhere,"  Buck  answered; 
"but  I  can't  hope  to  see  many  sights 
like  that.  If  it's  all  the  same  to  you, 
I'd  rather  go  there." 

"  I'm  glad,"  she  said.  "  Come  in  while 
I  wash  my  face.  And  then  we'll  get 
one  of  these  Yankee  Doodle  cabs  and 
drive  to  the  funicolare" 


126  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

"Why,  'Yankee  Doodle'?"  he  asked. 

"Haven't  you  observed  that  the  horses 
all  wear  feathers  in  their  caps?  And 
they're  all  called  Macaroni!" 


SSlyNapIer' 
A  •'Bay- 


There  was  so  much  to  see,  and  so  much 
to  say!  Yet  they  both  avoided  the 
purely  personal.  She  talked  about  her 
work,  in  a  general  way,  but  not  con- 
fidentially. He  said  nothing  about  his 
— there  seemed  nothing  to  say  about 
dried  fish.  Ella  Marie  was  loath  to 
mention  the  Bully  Buccaneer,  because 
she  knew  that  Buck  was  still  in  the 
business  he  had  called  a  living  death. 
Perhaps  he  was  trying  to  forget  it,  for 
a  brief  while. 

127 


128  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

There  could  be  no  doubt  about  his 
happiness  in  the  present — nor  yet  about 
her  own.  Italy  is  the  land  of  enchant- 
ment, but  it  is  possible  to  be  very  lonely 
in  the  midst  of  it  all — lonelier  far  than 
in  a  land  where  there  is  less  that  one 
might  enjoy  if  only  the  gods  gave  com- 
panionship. 

Buck  knew  very  little  about  Italy- 
it  had  not  been  part  and  parcel  of  the 
business  of  dried  fish,  as  it  had  been 
of  Ella  Marie's  business  of  song — but 
he  followed  where  she  led,  and  loved 
what  she  taught  him,  just  as  he  had  done 
years  ago,  in  Gloucester. 

She  thought  they  ought,  for  old-times' 
sake,  to  make  one  of  their  first  visits  to 
the  Aquarium  where  they  could  see 
living  specimens  of  those  deep-sea  crea- 
tures which  had  so  exercised  their  child- 
ish fancies. 

Then  they  made  the  Vesuvius  ascent; 


BY  NAPLES'  BAY  129 

they  visited  Herculaneum  and  Pompeii; 
they  went  to  Camaldoli ;  they  had  a  day 
of  days  at  Posilipo,  Puzzuoli,  Baia,  and 
Cumae.  It  was  unlocking  the  oldest 
story-books  they  knew,  to  stand  on  the 
shores  of  Avernus,  the  descent  to  which 
is  so  "easy";  and  to  go  into  the  cave 
of  the  Cumaean  Sibyl;  to  see  where  St. 
Paul  landed  on  his  way  to  Rome  to  appeal 
to  Caesar;  and  to  look  at  last  upon 
Virgil's  tomb — where,  however,  the  Muses 
were  not  dancing. 

Ella  Marie  was  a  little  uncertain 
what  to  propose  about  Amalfi  and  Ravel- 
lo  and  Salerno  and  Paestum.  Even  the 
furthest  of  them  can  be  visited  in  a  day 
trip  from  Naples;  but  this  is  fatiguing 
and  unsatisfactory.  She  did  not  know 
how  Buck  would  feel  about  the  "pro- 
prieties" of  a  more  leisurely  trip.  Per- 
haps they  would  better  join  a  conducted 
party — although,  for  herself,  she  would 


130  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

rather  never  see  Psestum  than  see  it 
that  way. 

Finally,  she  told  him  her  perplexities. 

"What  could  we  do?"  he  asked. 

"Well,  we  could  do  this:  we  want  to 
go  to  Capri.  We  can  go  there  some 
morning,  see  the  Blue  Grotto,  go  about 
the  island  and  I  can  take  the  boat  for 
Sorrento  at  4:30,  or  whenever  it  goes; 
you  can  stay  in  Capri  all  night,  and  come 
over  to  Sorrento  in  an  early  morning 
boat,  and  we  can  start  betimes  on  the 
Amalfi  drive.  Then,  I  can  stay  up  at 
the  Cappucini  Convento,  and  you  can  stay 
down  in  the  town.  We  can  drive  up  to 
Ravello  early  in  the  morning,  and  then 
you  can  go  to  Cava  for  that  night  and  I 
can  go  to  Salerno,  where  you  can  join  me 
at  nine  the  next  morning  for  Paestum." 

He  smiled,  ruefully.  "It  seems  like 
a  lot  of  beating  about,  and  a  lot  of  waiting 
around  alone — doesn't  it?" 


BY  NAPLES'  BAY  131 

"It  does,"  she  admitted.  "Perhaps 
we  can  find  some  one  to  take  along, 
for  the  proprieties." 

"We  didn't  have  them  to  hamper  us 
in  the  old  days,  when  we  used  to  visit 
all  these  places — did  we?" 

"No;   that  was  the  Garden  of  Eden." 

"And  what  is  this?" 

"I  don't  know,"  she  answered,  gaily. 
"But  it's  a  mighty  good  place  to  be,  and 
if  we're  wise  children  we'll  make  the 
very  best  of  it  and  not  mind  any  little 
difficulties.  It's  the  great  Big  Adven- 
ture we've  always  talked  about.  It's  an 
old,  old  dream  come  true.  Mercy  me! 
I  hope  we're  not  so  terribly  mature  that 
we  want  our  adventuring  to  be  without 
difficulties — all  on  feather-beds  of  ease." 

"You  shame  me!"  he  declared,  "You 
always  do." 

"How  you  must  hate  me!"  she  re- 
torted, saucily. 


132  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

"No,"  he  said,  simply;  "I  don't; 
I  must  like  to  be  shamed!" 

Not  the  least  of  Paestum's  charms  is 
its  comparative  inaccessibility.  True, 
this  is  not  charming  when  one  is  on  the 
way  thither — for  the  way  is  not  only 
long,  but  much  of  it  is  uninteresting, 
and  the  journey  is  arduous — but  after 
one  has  got  there  it  is  a  great  satisfac- 
tion that  few  persons  stay  long  enough 
in  Naples  and  care  enough  about  Greek 
temples  to  rise  at  5:30  or  thereabouts, 
catch  a  7  o'clock  train  and  arrive  at 
Paestum  nearly  four  hours  later.  Even 
of  those  who  visit  Pompeii,  go  to  Capri, 
and  take  the  Amalfi  drive,  not  any  con- 
siderable number  devote  a  day  to  Paes- 
tum. All  of  which  is  as  it  should  be, 
there  being  no  place  the  hurrying  sight- 
seer could  more  tragically  spoil  for  the 
true  pilgrim.  The  ocean  of  stillness  in 
which  the  temples  stand  is  as  awesome 


BY  NAPLES'  BAY  133 

as  the  great  structures  themselves.  If 
one  has  the  good  fortune  to  have  the 
place  to  himself,  and  the  happy  faculty 
of  forgetting  the  custodian  who  sells 
entrance-tickets  and  picture-postcards, 
he  may  easily — once  he  is  well  within 
the  big  enclosure — imagine  that  in  un- 
counted centuries  no  human  foot  has 
trodden  these  vast  porticoes,  or  bruised 
the  acanthus  leaves  growing  close  to 
the  temple  steps,  or  frightened  the  small 
snakes  and  lizards  who  sun  themselves 
on  these  warm,  golden  stones  or  hide 
in  these  lush  marsh  grasses. 

Buck  and  Ella  Marie  were  exceeding 
fortunate;  not  another  soul  came  nigh 
the  temples  while  they  were  there. 

The  day  was  perfect;  a  soft  breeze 
blowing  from  the  sea  a  mile  away,  tem- 
pered the  warmth  of  the  brilliant  sun- 
shine. The  sky,  intensely  blue  as  only 
a  southern  Italian  sky  can  be,  was 


134  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

cloudless,  and  added  thereby  to  the 
effect  of  illimitable  space. 

Not  a  sound!  They  could  almost 
hear  the  beating  of  their  own  hearts. 
Not  a  sign  that  anyone  had  lived  here- 
abouts since  the  Augustan  era  when, 
probably,  these  splendid  temples  began 
to  be  neglected.  Nothing  but  this 
breath-taking  majesty  of  stone,  this  for- 
est of  Ionic  pillars  like  the  boles  of 
great  trees,  and  overhead,  the  blue, 
blue  sky. 

Gone  is  nearly  every  trace  of  the  stucco 
with  which  these  rugged  stones  were 
once  covered ;  gone,  almost  every  vestige 
of  sculpture,  and  of  painting.  Green 
growing  things  spring  from  the  crannies 
in  the  entablature.  Holes,  like  great 
cannon  wounds,  gape  in  the  gold-brown 
travertine.  Yet  to  no  lover  of  beauty 
could  it  conceivably  occur  to  wish  that  he 
might  have  seen  this  place  two  thousand, 


BY  NAPLES'  BAY  135 

twenty-five  hundred,  years  ago,  rather 
than  now;  whatever  may  have  been  its 
glory  when  it  was  in  its  prime,  there 
can  never — one  feels  sure — have  been 
a  sublimity  in  it  and  about  it  such  as 
there  now  is.  The  mind  of  the  beholder 
is  unsaddened  by  any  regrets,  untroubled 
by  any  effort  to  remember — for  what 
was  the  history  of  these  temples  no  one 
of  us  has  ever  known.  But  the  spirit 
that  broods  over  the  place  is  the  spirit 
of  infinite  peace. 

"  If  I  live  to  be  as  old  as  these  temples 
are,"  said  Ella  Marie,  when  she  felt 
able  to  say  anything  at  all,  "I  shall 
never  be  so  fretted,  so  tired,  so  anxious, 
that  the  memory  of  this  day  will  not 
come  back  to  me  with  healing  in  its 
wings.  I  shall  feel  the  softness  of  this 
sea  breeze,  and  see  this  tesselation  of 
cool  shadows  on  the  stone  floors,  and 
hear  this  vast  soundlessness  —  until  I 


136  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

die;  and,  after  that,  I  shall  still  have 
Paestum  in  my  soul,  wherever  my  soul 
lives." 

Buck  made  no  reply.  This  place  had 
laid  hold  on  him  and  bound  him  as  with 
a  spell. 

They  wandered  up  and  down  in  the 
temples  and  outside  them.  They  lo- 
cated the  old  Greek  highroad,  inspected 
the  ancient  town  wall,  glanced  at  the 
remains  of  the  Roman  amphitheatre, 
and  satisfied  themselves  as  to  where  the 
Forum  stood. 

Then  they  went  across  the  dusty 
road,  outside  the  temple  enclosure,  and 
sat  under  a  tree  to  eat  their  luncheon. 
Ella  Marie  had  brought  bread  and  a  little 
jar  of  honey,  cheese  and  cold  chicken 
and  a  fiaschetta  of  the  sweet  wine  of 
Orvieto. 

Suddenly,  out  of  nowhere,  came  com- 
pany: a  boy  and  a  dog. 


BY  NAPLES'  BAY  137 

"Now,"  declared  Buck,  "I  know  I'm 
neither  dreaming,  nor  gone  to  heaven. 
If  this  dog  likes  chicken  bones,  he's 
a  real  dog  and  I'm  a  real  person  and 
this's  a  real  place." 

He  did  like  them.  And  the  boy  liked 
bread  and  honey. 

"Ask  him  if  he  lives  here,"  Buck  said. 

"He  says  he  does,"  Ella  Marie  re- 
ported; "  and  he  wants  to  know  if  the 
signer  comes  from  America.  He  has 
heard  it  is  a  fine  country,  America, 
and  he  would  like  to  go  there." 

"Ask  him,  please,  if  he  has  a  Bully 
Buccaneer." 

Buck  was  glad  he  could  not  under- 
stand Italian — it  was  so  delightful  to 
listen  to  the  unintelligible  words  Ella 
Marie  was  speaking,  and  watch  their 
effect  on  the  boy's  face.  No  need  to 
wait  for  her  translated  reply!  Here 
was  a  ship-owner,  unmistakably! 


138  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

They  gave  him  all  they  could  spare 
of  their  luncheon,  wished  him  favoring 
winds  for  his  ship,  and  took  their  way 
back  across  the  road,  and  into  the  temple 
of  Neptune. 

"I  wonder,"  mused  Buck,  "for  what 
it  was  they  worshipped  him — this  god 
of  the  briny  deep.  Was  it  because  so 
much  they  cared  about  was  in  their  ships, 
and  they  courted  his  mercy  on  them?" 

"I  don't  know,"  she  answered,  dream- 
ily. "Maybe  so." 

"Some  day,"  Buck  went  on,  thought- 
fully, "that  dago  kid  '11  get  to  America 
— perhaps — and  dig  gas-mains  or  sub- 
ways, and  live  in  a  fetid  tenement  with 
cluttered  fire-escapes  for  his  only  view, 
and  his  soul'll  be  sick  for  Italy — for  one 
glimpse  of  this  blue  sky,  one  whiff  of 
this  breeze  from  the  sea,  one  hour's 
siesta  in  the  shade  of  a  temple  portico. 
Isn't  life  queer?" 


BY  NAPLES'  BAY  139 

She  smiled;  but  the  smile  was  trem- 
ulous— misty. 

"Life  is — queer,"  she  assented,  softly. 
"We  haven't  said  anything  about  our 
ships,  and  very  little  about  ourselves. 
But  at  Amalfi  I  heard  you  sniff  the 
smell  of  the  nets  that  were  drying  on 
the  beach,  and  when  you  said,  half 
under  your  breath  and  all  to  your- 
self: 'it  smells  like  home!'  I  knew 
that  you  don't  feel,  now,  as  you  once 
did — about  dried  fish." 

"I  don't,"  he  admitted;  "but  I've 
been  afraid  to  tell  you.  I'm  afraid, 
now,  to  tell  you  what's  on  my  Bully 
Buccaneer." 

"Worse  than  a  wild  man  from  Borneo?" 

He  shook  his  head.  "You  may  think 
so." 

"How  about  that  cruise  to  the  place 
12,500  miles  from  home?" 

"I  couldn't  use  it,  now." 


140  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

"No?" 

"No;  this  cruise  that  I'm  on  now 
has  got  to  last  me  quite  a  while.  Be- 
cause, when  my  ship  comes  home  I  hope 
to  own  that  dried-fish  business!" 

He  was  watching  her  face  intently. 
The  expression  on  it  as  he  made  his 
confession,  was  full  of  tender  under- 
standing. 

"I  remember,"  she  murmured,  "what 
Gramma  said:  'the  cargoes  change.' ' 

"Has  the  Nancy  Lee  changed  hers, 
too?" 

She  nodded. 

"No  sashes  and  pussycats  and  pink 
slippers?" 

"And  no  fame  and  fortune.  I've  spent 
eight  years  in  the  temples  where  fame  is 
prayed  for,  and  in  the  schools  where 
she  is  sweated  for.  And  I — I  think 
that  when  she  is  won,  it  must  be  by  those 
who  care  more  for  her  than  I  do.  She's 


BY  NAPLES'  BAY  141 

a  jealous  goddess,  she  brooks  no  rivals; 
she  must  have  all  of  her  devotee,  or 
none.  And,  though  I  have  not  always 
known  it,  there  must  always  have  been 
other  cargo  on  my  Nancy  Lee" 

"So,  now — ?  "  he  whispered. 

"Now,  I  think  her  prow  is  home- 
ward turned.  Please,  Neptune,  send  her 
sailing  back  to  where — to  where  I  first 
waited  for  her,  and  knew  the  Gloriana 
— and  the  Bully  Buccaneer" 

Buck  could  not  trust  himself  to  speak, 
for  several  minutes.  The  ground  where- 
on he  stood  was  so  very,  very  holy  that 
he  feared  to  profane  it  by  some  clumsi- 
ness of  faltering  speech.  His  gaze  was 
fixed  far  off,  where  bright-colored  sails 
passed  in  the  Tyrrhenian  Sea;  but  he 
was  seeing  beyond  those — seeing  a  Prom- 
ised Land  where  a  man  went  home,  at 
night,  from  his  work;  and  a  woman 
was  there  to  greet  him;  a  woman  who 


142  WHEN  MY  SHIP  COMES  HOME 

made  him,  as  he  held  her  against  his 
breast,  feel  that  though  life  had  been 
sweet  to  other  men,  to  him  above  them 
all  was  it  infinitely  wonderful  and  pre- 
cious. 

"Was  there,"  he  said,  presently,  "was 
there  anything  on  your  Nancy  Lee  that 
— that  you  never  told  me  about?" 

"Yes,"  she  murmured. 

"Was  it  there  all  the  time,  no  matter 
how  the  other  cargo  changed?" 

"Yes,"  she  said.  "Was  there — some- 
thing like  that  on  the  Bully  Buccaneer?" 

"How  can  I  say  until  you  tell  me 
what  'it'  was?" 

She  smiled  up  at  him,  radiantly. 

"The  first  time  I  sent  my  Nancy  Lee 
a-sailing,  I  told  Gramma  'the  most 
important  thing  for  her  to  bring  me  is 
— somebody  to  play  with.' ' 

"And  then—?" 

"The    dream    of    the    Perfect    Com- 


BY  NAPLES'  BAY 


143 


rade  never  fades — does  it?  All  cargoes 
change  but  that.  It  was  the  one  thing 
that  the  Gloriana  brought  Gramma  at 
the  last.  I  never  can  forget  her  joy- 
ful cry:  Thaniel!'" 

He  laid  his  head  on  her  shoulder, 
to  hide  his  happy  tears.  She  bent  and 
kissed  him. 

"My  ship  is  home,"  he  said. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


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